


Cosmic Intervention

by NewandOld



Series: Cosmic Intervention AU [1]
Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Alive Tadashi, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Hamada bros, Kidnapped Hiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NewandOld/pseuds/NewandOld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's just a small fire!" Hiro protested, trying to tug his jacket free from Tadashi's grip. "And it's going to take me another month to gather up enough materials to make another transmitter!" </p><p>Hiro goes to get his transmitter, despite Tadashi's efforts to stop him from going into the building.</p><p>Twin-fic to I'll Try to Picture Me Without You But I Can't.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inferno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a twin-fic, called "I'll Try to Picture Me Without You But I Can't" by songdreamer.
> 
> For this chapter, read "Picture Me Without You" before reading "Cosmic Intervention" for max feels.

Hiro couldn't believe it.

He had done it! He had gotten into San Fransokyo Institute of Technology!

Punching a fist into the air, Hiro shouted for the world to hear. "I did it!"

"You did," agreed Tadashi, grin as wide as his own. His older brother offered a fist. "Fist bump?"

Hiro immediately bumped fists, then made an exploding sound effect. " _K-pgrrwwww_!"

As Tadashi grinned proudly down at him, he couldn't help grin back, bouncing on his feet. Thanks to his older brother, he had safely finished his presentation.

He had been nervous in the beginning, especially after seeing the reaction of that one guy with the clipboard, but just when he felt like things couldn't be any worse, Tadashi had mouthed to him, 'breathe'.

…It was good advice given just in time; he had wanted to melt into the ground and disappear from shame. But after taking a deep breath, he had calmed down and finished the presentation as planned.

The best part? Everyone started paying attention and was subsequently amazed by his invention, and! Professor Callaghan had given him the acceptance letter  _personally_!

He was interrupted in his thoughts when arms grabbed him and lifted him off his feet.

A voice gushed with affection. "Come here, you," It was Tadashi, and he was currently carrying him like… like he would a toddler!

"You complete and utter genius!" His older brother shouted proudly, swinging him around in a circle whilst hugging him tightly.

"Gah, gross! G-get off, you nerd!" Hiro began to squirm, his thoughts a jumble of 'totally making a scene' and 'darn I gotta get taller soon'.

Tadashi ignored his squirming, hugging Hiro even tighter. Rubbing against his younger brother's messy hair, Tadashi spoke into his ear: "I am," – cue tighter hug – " _so_  proud of you."

Hiro felt his cheeks burn in embarrassment, aware that they were attracting amused looks from bystanders.

He hissed, "You're so embarrassing!" then squeaked when Tadashi's hug became even tighter than before. "Can't.  _Breathe_." 

_Argh, we eat the same things, so how is he so strong?_

When Tadashi showed no signs of loosening his grip, Hiro began jabbing his brother's side – his older brother was weak right under the arms and the ribs – a few seconds of jabbing later, he was free from the death grip, his older brother wincing in pain at a particularly sharp jab.

"Okay, okay. No hugs." Tadashi rubbed at his sore spots as he grimaced. "Your elbows are lethal."

Hiro took deep breaths of fresh air, mentally chanting  _can't hit Tadashi, he's still a lot bigger_ , grumbling out a semi-nonchalant 'whatever'.

He brushed away the hair in his eyes. He looked up to see Tadashi coming closer with a familiar look on his face.

Immediately pointing his index finger out in defense, Hiro warned him off with slight panic in his voice. "No more hugs!"

Tadashi smiled that infuriating big-brother-smile, and backed off, nodding sagely. "Sure."

He then proceeded to ruffle his hair roughly.

"Gah!" Hiro ducked, avoiding the hand. " _Tadashi_!"

When Tadashi just laughed, Hiro couldn't help but be frustrated, though he could see why Tadashi found it funny. "Stop laughing!"  _Man, just you wait... I'm so gonna get you when least expect it..._

As if sensing Hiro's rising need for revenge, Tadashi raised his hands in a placating manner, his eyes crinkled up with mirth. "All right, all right, I'll stop." His smile grew softer, fonder. "But you were amazing. And I'm proud of you."

"Yeah, yeah." Hiro muttered. He shifted his feet, hoping that the light was dim enough to hide his burning cheeks. Though, from Tadashi's wide smile, it wasn't dim enough.

"And stop that! It's embarrassing!" He pulled up the hood and zipped up the jacket up all the way, pulling it over his mouth to cover up part of his face. From the shadows of his hood, he glared at his aggravating older brother.

Tadashi chuckled, reaching over to pat his head. "Come on genius, let's go," A nudge when Hiro stubbornly remained still, arms crossed. "Aunt Cass and the others are waiting."

Hiro sighed, then mockingly answered his older brother. " _Okay_ , Tadashi."

Tadashi mimicked Hiro's tone. "Good,  _Hiro_."

From that point on the conversation digressed into playful insults as they started making their way to where their friends were waiting.

When they almost reached the entrance of the parking lot, Hiro couldn't help making a last poke at his brother in revenge for the teasing earlier, grumbling into the zipped up jacket. "Guess I'll be joining you at your  _nerd school_."

His hood was jerked down abruptly, shocking Hiro into stopping, his eyes wide with disbelief.  _He did_ not _just touch the_   _hood_. To retaliate, he knocked off Tadashi's cap from his head. Tadashi froze in surprise, and the two brothers had a brief staring contest.

All of a sudden, Tadashi's pokerface morphed into  _that_ smile; Hiro smiled an impish smile of his own in answer as he waved Tadashi's trademark hat in his hand like a trophy.

A few seconds later a game of keep-Tadashi's-hat-away was in full swing, Tadashi chasing Hiro around threateningly muttering, "Bear hug… Bear hug…"

Unfortunately for Hiro, compared to Tadashi's fit physique, he had no chance of outlasting his brother in stamina. All too soon, he was in his older brother's clutches once again.

"So... What did you call me, bonehead?" Tadashi growled playfully.

Hiro stuck out his tongue. Childish, but the only action he could currently take. "I called you a  _nerd_!"

Tadashi hmmed noncommittally. "Oh yeah? Well, since  _you'll_ be attending the nerd school in a month," At the change in his older brother's tone, Hiro gulped in nervousness.  _Uh-oh. I have a bad feeling that he's going to – not there!_ Tadashi began tickling him mercilessly, singsonging, "You're  _also_ a nerd,  _nerd_." Hiro yelped but couldn't help laughing.

"Gahahahaha!" Hiro tried choking out a calming breath, trying tolerate the ticklish feeling, but Tadashi's unrelenting fingers made it hard to concentrate on ignoring the ticklish –  _Ah!_ "Okay, okay, I give!"

Tadashi paused in his tickling, but didn't let go. "What's Rule 96 of the Hamada Bros?"

Hiro gaped at his brother. "Seriously? You want me to sa – AHH!" Hiro tried to wriggle away as Tadashi resumed his tickling. "Aha, ah! Uh, un,  _uncle_!" Finally, the tortuous tickling stopped.

The younger Hamada sagged into his older brother's arms, taking a moment to calm his breathing before commenting, "I feel like I'm gonna die."

Tadashi chuckled, then helped his brother stand. "You'll be fine." Hiro felt his older brother's big hands place the cap down low on his messy head, almost over his eyes. Hiro pouted as he fixed it into a better position, grumbling inwardly about the unfairness of his older brother's larger physique and longer reach.

When Hiro looked back up at his older brother, he saw that Tadashi had a fond smile on his face, looking off towards Aunt Cass and his friends.

At the sight of Tadashi's lab friends, Hiro's forgotten excitement for getting accepted to SFIT came rushing back. He began to skip as he and Tadashi started heading for Aunt Cass and the gang again, Tadashi walking sedately slightly behind him.

Hiro couldn't help the small chuckle of glee that escaped him as he happily bounced around Tadashi.

He was so excited for the coming school year, because– because–

Because he was going to go do awesome  _robotics-_ inventing in  _college_  with his  _brother_!

* * *

They were passing the entrance to the parking lot when a shrill bell rang in the quiet night.

Hiro glanced up at Tadashi to see him frowning at something in the distance. "What is it?" He took off the view-limiting cap and handed it back to his older brother, craning his neck to see what Tadashi saw.

His eyes widened when he saw the dark column of smoke rising from the exhibition hall. He glanced up at Tadashi to see him look very serious, all lightheartedness from before forgotten.

"Fire alarm," Tadashi answered absently, setting the hat back on his head. "Come on – and stay close."

Tadashi pushed Hiro ahead, hands on his shoulders to lead him in the right direction. There was a growing crowd near the steps, and soon Hiro was surrounded by people taller than him, blocking his view of what was going on.

 _I seriously need to talk to Aunt Cass about buying more milk_ , Hiro grumbled inwardly.  _I'm surrounded by people who are inconsiderate of shorter people's feelings._

Tadashi tapped a shoulder of one of the people who was gathered around. "What's going on?" he asked, watching the smoke rise from a far corner of the roof of the building.

"A fire broke out," came the reply. "The fire department's been called."

Hiro was immediately interested.  _A fire? No way, how cool is that? A real fire up close! Maybe I would get to see a real firefighter shooting the jets of water. I've always wanted to see how the truck pumped water..._

"And they better get here quickly," someone added. "There are  _a lot_ of flammable things in there."

"Yeah," Tadashi answered the woman distractedly, eyes still on the trail of smoke in the air.

 _Wait, flammable things? The fire is in_ there  _where my microbots are?_

Hiro gasped, patting down on his pockets.  _Oh no!_

Tadashi looked down at him. "What is it?"

"My neural-cranial transmitter!" Hiro answered, turning his pockets inside-out frantically, hoping that the transmitter would magically appear. "It's still in there!" _It took_ weeks  _to solder the entire electromagnetic pathways and tons of expensive metals to make that transmitter! I_ _can't_ _let it get destroyed by fire, I_ have _to get it out!_

He took a step forward, but something snagged his jacket hood, jerking him back. Hiro looked back to find his brother frowning down at him, holding onto his hood firmly.

"Oh no, you don't," Tadashi said determinedly. "There's a fire. Hopefully it'll survive the flames, but if it doesn't, you'll just have to make another one. I'm not letting you go inside."

 _But – but – !_  "It's just a small fire!" Hiro protested, trying to tug his jacket free from Tadashi's grip. "And it's going to take me another _month_  to gather up enough materials to make another neural-cranial transmitter!"

Tadashi shook his head. "No is no, Hiro," he said firmly.

_Okay, didn't want to resort to this, but he's giving me no choice..._

Hiro used his ultimate wild card, cutely pouting at his brother, head tilted at just the right angle, eyes just wide enough and lips pursed just the right amount. Aunt Cass had never, ever said no to this calculated pout, and he had tried not to use the expression often, in order to leave a bigger impact when he  _did_  use it. His brother was obviously not going to be able to resis –

Tadashi's face remained stern. "Even with the puppy eyes," He tacked on.

"Killjoy," Hiro muttered, slumping in his brother's grip.  _Let go of the jacket, let go of the jacket..._ Unfortunately, Tadashi knew him too well and didn't let go of his jacket.

Gosh, his brother was such a stick in the mud.

 _I only need to go through the back door on the opposite side of where the fire was, grab the transmitter and I'd be back before anyone knew, but Tadashi just wouldn't let go of my_  – _wait._   _Tadashi is only holding onto my_ jacket _._

Quickly, before Tadashi thought to grab him by the arm, Hiro unzipped himself and slipped out, ducking between the small spaces in the crowd. He yelled to his brother who shouted in surprise and angrily called out his name, trying to follow with difficulty. "Sorry, bro! I'll be in and out, I promise!" He thought he heard Tadashi say something, but whatever the older Hamada said was lost in the hubbub of the crowd.

Hiro slipped between people and escaped the crowd in record time, then proceeded to run around the building for the small fire exit he remembered seeing near the stage where he had left his project.

When he opened the fire exit, Hiro was relieved to find that the room was fire-free, though there was a lot of smoke. He thought he saw a flicker of fire at the farthest corner of the large room, but it was hard to tell in the smoky room.

"Better hurry..." Hiro muttered, darting towards the stage where he had left the transmitter and microbots.

He found the neural-cranial transmitter easily and grabbed it quickly. When he looked back around to check around the place for the fire, he saw that the flicker from before had become bigger, and he saw the orange glow of fire. There were tiny flickering flames at one of the tables, blackening the plastic-y project as it burnt the poster behind it.

Hiro was turning away to leave when a mini-explosion caused him to look back at the project in surprise.

 _The project must have had something flammable inside,_ he thought as he covered his mouth with his sleeve.

Now intent on getting out of the building, he hurried towards the exit when an idea came to him, stopping him in his tracks. He stared down at the transmitter in his hand.

_The microbots do everything I imagine them to... Are there enough microbots to extinguish the fire before it spreads any further?_

He stood a moment, looking back and forth from the transmitter and the flames. As he deliberated on his course of action, he didn't notice a figure slowly approaching him from behind, mostly hidden by the smoke.

Hiro jumped at the sudden crash when the burning table collapsed, spreading fire to something he remembered to be some kind of alternative energy source –  _Okay, forget stopping the fire, I_ really _need to get out of here._

But before he could turn and run in the direction of the fire exit, someone grabbed him from behind and covered his nose and mouth with a cloth that smelled strongly of some sickly-sweet smell. Hiro yelled into the cloth in surprise and began struggling against the strong arms that held him captive.

 _Wha_ –  _Wha_ _t's going on – wait, isn't this like..._ _? With... chloroform? Nowaywhowould_ –

He desperately pulled at the arms that were holding him up in the air, trying loosen his assailant's hold to stop breathing in the stupid fumes that were choking him up –

–  _When arms are disabled, Tsuyoshi-sensei said to_ –

He kicked at the guy, trying to hit wherever he could, but the overpoweringly sweet fumes were clouding up his senses –

–  _to... to... something... what was it_  –

He struggled, but his limbs were like wet noodles, slowly losing strength as he lost the battle of  _not_  breathing in the chemical –

–  _last... resort was... to..._

It was hard to breathe; the cloying smell was like trying to breathe underwater and the chemical scorched his throat as it passed through; he felt his fingers lose hold of the transmitter –

_...t..o... kick..._

The fourteen-year-old dangled uselessly in his assailant's arms as if a puppet on cut strings. One foot gave a final twitch as it tried to follow the last command to kick, but it fell limp and felt as if heavy weights were attached –

_...no... can't..._

The teen smelled a wave of smoky air instead of the chokingly sweet whatever-it-was as the cloth was removed from his face. As he vaguely felt himself shifted into a fireman's carry, the smell of acrid smoke pulled Hiro back from the border of unconsciousness, but the chemical's effect on the rest of his body didn't allow him to struggle again. Soon, the smell of smoke was starting to overpower the smell of chemicals in his nose; but now it was like trying to breathe acid instead of water – the smoke stung his already-scorched airways something horrible –

_...need... wake..._

His eyes were only half-open, slowly closing. He fought to keep his heavy eyelids open, but breathing was getting even more painful and his eyes were stinging from the smoke –

 _._ _..no..._

His assailant threw something, and he thought he heard a crash of glass breaking followed by a  _phump_ of a fire growing larger. His arms and legs began swinging limply as he felt the man moving, carrying him away somewhere – he tried to keep his eyes open, but the smoke and the harsh orange glow everywhere  _hurt_  to see –

As his eyes closed shut – just for a second, to rest it before opening it again – he thought he heard his brother's voice calling his name and tried to call back, but the only sound that came from his lips was a small, incoherent mumble. He thought he heard Tadashi's voice again, but the stupid chemical and the smoke was making him – so – tired –

_Tadashi... I'm... right... here..._


	2. Don't Leave Me Here Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read chapter 2 of "Picture Me Without You" by songdreamer before reading this chapter for max feels.

When Hiro woke, he didn't notice that the ceiling was not the familiar wooden beams of his room.

His mouth feeling dry, the teen slowly sat up, eyes half open as the blanket pooled down around his waist.

He rubbed at his eyes sleepily, still feeling oddly tired. As he shifted, he smelt a whiff of smoke. He frowned down at his clothes –  _funny, wouldn't Tadashi have changed him into pajamas_  – and blanket –  _when did Aunt Cass change the sheets_  – then sniffed at the collar of his shirt to see if it was the source of the smoky scent.

The acrid smell of a sickening chemical caused him to flinch, immediately causing the pounding of his small headache to throb painfully. He felt himself sway and reached down the bed with an arm to steady himself.

That sudden whiff of the sickly-sweet chemical gave him a dizzying headache, but drove away what lethargy he had. When he put the two smells together, Hiro's eyes widened as he remembered –

His presentation at the showcase, the guy with the mustache stepping away in disinterest, Tadashi mouthing 'breathe', the joy as he showed off his microbots –

The pride he felt at receiving the acceptance letter from Professor Callaghan, Tadashi's embarrassing show of affection –

The shock of not having his neural-cranial transmitter in his jacket, the shout of anger from Tadashi as he rushed away, the smoky exhibition hall –

Then someone lifting him off his feet from behind and holding him still, forcing him to breathe in the sickly-sweet chemical that fogged up his senses –

He was now completely awake, aware that he was in a...  _situation_.

A kidnapping.

...Or not.

Because, why would he be kidnapped? It wasn't like Yama still wanted revenge for the bot-fighting thing, that was months ago!

But ever since that last adventure on the streets, he hadn't done anything wrong, staying on the straight and narrow, too busy developing the microbots. He didn't annoy anyone... as far as he knew.

Hiro's breathing quickened and his heart began to race as he glanced around the room, looking for something familiar in the room.

The unrecognizable room was reminiscent of a hospital room; all bare, dull-colored and  _boring_.

Still, he searched for anything that would give him a clue why he was in this room and not the hospital – because  _here_  was definitely not a hospital room, although it did have its similarities.

As for why, it was industrial gray instead of the hygienic white that most hospitals insisted on, for one. Also, there were no windows, a no-no for hospitals, just in case some patients were... well, claustrophobic.

Involuntarily, Hiro began listing away the inconsistencies that he could see, denying the piling evidence that he was taken away and  _kidna_  –

Hiro quickly stopped the thought, because obviously, he was just placed in the wrong room in the hospital. There was no reason for anyone to take him. He continued to catalog the things in the room, moving slowly so not to antagonize his pounding head.

There was a gray desk with several thick books on it, a chair pulled up next to it. It was right by the bed that the teen was currently lying on.

To the right of the desk came a... wall-sized board? Or something that looked like it. Hiro filed the detail away and skimmed over the blank wall next to that, almost missing the something round hidden by the shadows –  _Aha._

Intending to make sure that he was in some weird gray hospital – because that was obviously where he was – Hiro quickly jumped off the bed, only to slip and fall onto the cold floor. His balance was all wonky and strange, as if gravity's pull had strengthened somehow.

A breathless chuckle escaped his mouth as something amusing and illogical came to him.  _Heh, alien spaceship? Maybe this is outer space?_

With a jerk of his head, he brushed away the stray thought and winced at the sudden vertigo. An exasperated voice – it sounded annoyingly like his older brother – echoed in his head: _Really, Hiro?_  That's  _the first thing you think of in this situation?_

Hiro got up off the floor slowly, steadying himself on the bed. He staggered towards the door, one hand clutching his head to fend off the nausea and the other hand supporting his weight. He painstakingly made his way to the door hoping this  _kidnapping_  business was all a stupid misunderstanding –

The doorknob turned easily, and Hiro's heart soared – he  _had_ simply been placed in a wrong room in the hospital – only to fall with disappointment when he found himself in a small bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower stall.

He tried to keep his rising panic in check, because he  _didn't have claustrophobia, that was a stupid fear for little kids_  – the bathroom was  _not_  further proof that he was in an isolated room, it was – it was –

Not finishing the train of thought, Hiro rushed out of the bathroom as quickly as he could, still leaning heavily on the wall. His breath came out in small gasps as he looked frantically around the gray colorless room. He ignored his hammering headache to follow the orders of his panic that was telling him to seek something or someone familiar  _right now_ , because he was somewhere unknown,  _alone_ , and maybe  _kidnapped_  –

The teen's second, much more alarmed sweep of the room did not reveal anything different from before. The same gray furniture and same  _gray_  walls and the same  _graygraygray_  all around.

The younger Hamada shook his head particularly hard in an attempt to clear the pounding in his head, only for his already-wobbly knees to give out and cause him to land in a heap on the ground.

Hiro's oncoming panic attack (he always knew when he found himself on the ground, panting as if he had run a marathon when he obviously  _hadn't_ ) hindered his efforts to get up properly; he did his best to crawl to the nearest wall, pushing himself against it with difficulty until he was sitting up.

Ignoring the black dots that were appearing around the edges of his eyesight, he closed his eyes, forcing his breath through his nose. Laboriously pulling his knees into position, Hiro curled up, his head tucked in between his knees.

Automatically, he began going through the panic prevention tactics Tadashi had drilled into him when he was eight.

* * *

_"Close your eyes," Hiro opened an eye to peek at his older brother reading to him from a pamphlet, but a hand closed them shut again. "Think of somewhere quiet or familiar."_

Quiet and familiar? I don't  _do_  quiet...

_Tadashi's calm voice came from somewhere in front of him. "Mentally, do something you normally do in that space." A moment of silence._

I don't go to quiet areas. C'mon... Those hydrogen ion sheets just came in today and it's totally just begging me to use them for batteries on Mochi's rocket boosters!

_"Got it?" Tadashi asked._

_"_ No _," Hiro opened his eyes and pouted at his older brother who had a pamphlet titled 'Panic Attacks and How to Stop Them'. "Why do I have to do this again?"_

 _"Because, bonehead, your panic attack yesterday almost got you hit by a_  car _." Tadashi reached over and closed his eyes with a hand again. Hiro grumbled something about 'overprotective mother hen', but made sure to be quiet enough that the teenager in front of him didn't hear._

_"Hmm... Okay then, for the quiet place, why don't you picture our room?" Hiro heard his brother scoot in closer. "And as for what you normally do in this space... Ah, tinkering with the Robot cat would do."_

_Hiro rolled his closed eyes._  I am almost 80 percent sure that he is antagonizing me on purpose.  _"It's_ Rocket _cat. At least get the name right."_

 _He felt his brother give him a slight tap on his forehead with the pamphlet. "_ Concentrate _, kuncklehead."_

* * *

_"Concentrate, knucklehead."_

Hiro's shallow, almost-hyperventilating breaths slowly steadied, the memory of his brother calming down the worst of his panic as he went through the familiar steps.

_Close my eyes, breathe slowly through the nose... check..._

_Picture the room..._ _the carpet, desk and shelf full of different robots built from scratch, the window with the nice view of the San Fransokyo Bridge, the soft bed and blankets that Mochi sometimes sneaked into at night..._

 _Mentally tinker with whatever project I am working on... That would be the microbots..._  Hiro flailed a moment when he couldn't remember exactly what he did with the microbots in his _room_  instead of the garage, but calmed down again when he centered himself with the thoughts of his older brother instead.

 _Tadashi's work space that I sometimes invade and take over_ _–_ _The comforting faint smell of machinery oil from Tadashi's side of the room when he came in late at night from the SFIT lab_ _–_ _His warm bed and big comforting form I sometimes snuggle into when a thunderstorm becomes too loud to bear_ _–_

Hiro's heart and breathing gradually slowed down and evened out; before long, the teen was carefully unfurling himself from his fetal position, though he was still slumped into the wall.

He paused before opening his eyes, squeezing them tightly together as he mentally hoped and wished with all his heart.  _Please,_ please _let the stupid suffocating room be all a nightmare that I somehow hallucinated..._

_And it had to be a hallucination, because what idiot made a room with no... entrance...?_

With a figurative lightbulb over his head at that new thought, Hiro immediately began to search the room again much more meticulously, with a hopeful glint in his eyes.

The teen's efforts were rewarded when he found another door, hidden from his previous viewpoint from the bed. He immediately stood, fighting the dizziness from rising too quickly. Leaning against the wall, he stumbled towards the door, fragile hope rising again – of course he couldn't possibly have been kidnapped, he must have mistaken someone's efforts in saving him from the fire as something malicious –

Perhaps he was having a horrid nightmare. Anytime now, he was going to wake up to find himself in a hospital room being treated for semi-serious smoke inhalation that caused hallucinating, because the hospital's obviously where Tadashi would have carted him off to right after –

But Hiro's small hope was shattered into nothing when he reached the door – it was locked.

The fourteen-year-old jiggled the doorknob desperately, clinging to the quick-fading shreds of hope that the door was just stuck and needed a little more force, that the door  _would_  lead to a hospital where he was supposed to be, that he was having a nightmare, and that  _this wasn't real_ –

Hiro's breath sped up again without him noticing, too busy trying to get the door to  _open_  – and the suppressed panic came back with a vengeance. When the teen finally noticed the edges of black creeping up in his field of sight, Hiro tried to calm his breathing again, closing his eyes and using the techniques that Tadashi had shown him, but they  _weren't_ –  _working_  –

Frantically, the almost-teen started banging the door, yelling. "Hey –" He was cut off by his own hacking coughs when his dry, already-painful throat felt as if something poked sharply inside as he attempted to talk. For a few seconds, there was nothing but harsh coughing in the silence. The younger Hamada bent over double, leaning heavily on the door as he tried to take a breath in between his coughs.

When his hacking finally died down, Hiro panted as he tried to catch his breath. The teen began banging a fist against the door again, making another attempt in yelling. "Anyone... out there? ...I think... the door is stuck...  _Hello_?"

He had to stop every now and then, because he was trying not to cough and there was a burn in his throat and spasming in his lungs as his body threatened to go into a coughing fit again –

Pausing to take soothing breaths to prevent the next series of coughing from happening, Hiro was alarmed when his breathing became even shallower and faster than before and _wouldn't slow down_ –

His thoughts were all a jumble as his fear of being lost, of  _being left behind_ , _being isolated_  mixed in with the hysteria of not being able to breathe –

As coherent thought began to leave him, the teen began to shout desperately, ignoring the wet rustiness he felt at the back of his throat as he pleaded and begged and  _coughed_  –

"Anyone – out  _ther-e_  – Any- _one_ – HEL- _lo_ –"

The fourteen-year-old was yelling as loud as he could, but his voice barely louder than a whisper. His voice cracked again at the last syllable, but Hiro continued pounding on the door, refusing to abandon the hope that someone would hear. He dry swallowed his coughs and the wetness that did nothing to soothe the dryness in his throat, disregarding the pain of using his hoarse voice. The teen began to feel lightheaded from the lack of air – but who cared if he wasn't getting enough air if he wasn't  _getting out_  –

His breath was coming fast, knees were wobbling, eyes were burning with tears and chest was feeling weighed-down – the slowing fist-drumming on the door quickened in tempo.  _I'm beginning to hyperventilate –_

"Let me out.  _Letmeout_!"

Silence was the only response when he paused to calm his coughing fit again.

Hiro desperately spoke at the locked door, voice soft and shaky as his tears threatened to fall. "...Please..."

But still, no acknowledgment came from the other side.

Dry sobs wracked the teen's figure as he started to hit the door again, pleading  _pleasepleasepleaseletmeout_  as he jiggled the door knob again. There was a faint ringing in his ears and the lubdub-lubdub of his heart was coming faster and louder –

Though he suddenly felt a strange hotness to the room, the teen ignored it in favor of trying to keep pounding on the door through his harsh breathing and sobbing of _Tadashiwhereareyou_ and  _helpmeIneedtogetout_. But the banging was becoming weaker, and his already wobbly knees and legs finally gave out when a particularly hard knock of his fists twisted his body at an angle.

One of the teen's hand caught the door knob as he fell, and he was left with one hand pulling himself upright on the knob and the other flat against the door for further support.

As he tried to pull himself up again, a strange, very sudden sense of happiness and euphoria filled him.  _This is a joke! Someone must have thought this might be funny!_

Hiro began to laugh, though it was more like the harsh sound of a dying bagpipe than a laugh.

His shoulders shaking from the mirth that overtook him, and the teen almost lost his grip on the door knob as he laughed as if he'd heard the funniest thing in the whole world.

The tears, which had been collecting itself long before his laughter, spilled freely over the teen's cheeks, making jerky tear tracks on his cheek as his body twitched in time to his hysterical laughter and chokes of breath.

Hiro slid down further down the door; he was barely getting enough air, using it all to laugh. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his sudden and inexplicable amusement.

The teen hoarsely whispered into the door, chuckling intermittently. "Very... funny, guys... that's... enough now... This really isn't... funny anymore... Now lemme out..."

He giggled hysterically when still no response came, his quaking shoulders slipping his fingers off from his grip of the door knob.

"Haha... Tadashi... remember the Hamada Bros Rule 17?" Hiro reached out and clutched the doorknob with both hands before he totally lost his hold, trying to turn the knob again as his body dangled, half-prostrate next to the door.

More silence.

Hiro still remembered the very first time they had set that rule, when he was six; any mention of the number 17 should have stopped the prank, if Tadashi was anywhere nearby...

* * *

_"Tadashi and Hiro Hamada, you two get here_  right now! _"_

 _The two brothers froze in the middle of their playful shoving at the sudden shout. They both turned, eyes huge with surprise to hear Aunt Cass_  shouting _. In all the several years they had lived with her, she had never raised her voice at them – became annoyed with them, yes, but never shouting._

 _"I have told you again and again to please stay_  on the sidewalk _, but what do you do?" Her eyes looked suspiciously shiny as she went on. "You_  don't  _stay on the sidewalk, making me_ shout _at you, which makes me feel_  guilty _, making me_  stressed _, and now I need to go stuff my face with... with..." She saw the donut shop nearby. "...Donuts!" She said in an upset voice, throwing her hands up in the air._

_She stalked into the store, then poked her head back out to them and yelled, still quite upset. "They. smell. really. good!" Her voice sounded teary, as if she would burst into tears any moment. "...Do you want some?"_

_When the two brothers stared back and slowly shook their heads, eyes still wide in surprise mixed with guilt, she sniffed, brushing a tear off her eye. "I'm not stress-eating, it's... it's... oh, who am I kidding? It's stress-eating." She went back into the store, grabbing a tray and beginning to stacking all the donuts she could see onto it._

_Tadashi and Hiro stood still in silence a while longer, watching the stack of donuts get higher on the tray through the shop's windowpanes._

_The older Hamada brother broke the silence, not taking his eyes off of Aunt Cass' furious stacking of sweet desserts. "...Hiro?"_

_Hiro, similarly shocked at Aunt Cass' outburst, didn't look away from the woman inside the store either. "...Yeah?"_

_"Let's add a rule... number 17. Stopping all pranks, rough-housing and teasing;_  everything _, no matter what."_

_Hiro looked up at his brother in confusion. "Huh?"_

_Tadashi glanced down at his younger brother then back into the donut shop, where Aunt Cass could be seen at the counter with more than a dozen donuts. "...I don't really want to make Aunt Cass cry like we did today."_

_Hiro nodded solemnly. "Okay... I understand... Rule 17... No pranks or teasing or anything...everything stops."_

_Tadashi agreed with a similar solemn nod. "Yeah... for Aunt Cass."_

* * *

The silence in the room felt endless while Hiro waited for some sign that someone,  _anyone_  was going to open the door and  _make everything stop_.

He stayed half-lying on the ground, waiting. The weight on his chest was getting even heavier –

The teen's listless body become even more limp as he realized that his brother was  _not there_  and that  _no one was coming_. He gave a shaky sigh to calm himself, to find that his erratic breathing had slowed down from the rapid pace from before, somehow. And it was so difficult to remain hanging on the door... He was so,  _so_  tired...

"Bro...?" Hiro whispered uncertainly as he felt his eyes growing heavy. Still, he stubbornly held onto the doorknob by his fingertips.

His heart was loud in his eardrums again, this time at a much slower rhythm; he even felt the steady pumping of his blood in his ears and fingers. Hiro's numb fingers on the door knob slipped further off, and soon his upper body fell to the floor.

_Huh, it didn't hurt... but the floor is cold... Not supposed to sleep on cold floors, 'cause Aunt Cass is gonna flip... 'Dashi made me... promise..._

On the floor, his eyes half-shut, the fourteen-year-old muttered, "'Dashi... you promised..."

His eyes closed, and he felt as if swallowed by darkness –

He did not know that a hand flipped his body right side up, seconds after his eyes closed.

* * *

The locked door opened with a whirr, revealing a tall man holding an oxygen mask in his hands.

He quickly entered the room and paused in front of Hiro's prone form, flipping the teen over and placing the oxygen mask over the mouth and nose. He checked Hiro's pulse, then proceeded to pick him up to place him back on the bed.

Leaving the oxygen mask on the fourteen-year-old, the man began to turn to leave when he paused, turned back and tucked in the blankets around the unconscious form.

The man gave a quick glance around the room, gaze lingering on the books on the desk and the blank wall next to it. He turned away and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him with a loud click. Barely a second later, the whirring of a lock turning in place was heard.

The boy in the bed gave a small sigh, oblivious to the world.


	3. Not a Soul to Hear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read this chapter before reading chapter 3 of "Picture Me Without You" for max feels.

_Hot sandy beach_ –

 _Sunny day that inexplicably turned cold_ –

_Where was Auntie Cass?_

_Where was 'Dashi?_

_Worry_ –

 _Anxiety_ –

 _Fear_ –

 _Whispers all around him, fingers pointing_  –

Where did they go?

 _A red towel with the gundam robot all folded up and alone under the parasol_ –

 _Did Auntie Cass and 'Dashi leave him behind? They said_ –

 _They said they would never leave him alone but_ –

_Their towels were gone._

_("– Hiro!_ Where are you _?")_

_..._

_....._

_..._

 

_"– I'm so, so sorry –"_

_"– Rule Number 1 of the Hamada Bros – "_

_" – I, Tadashi Hamada, pinky promise to never leave Hiro alone, unless he wants me to – "_

...Pinky promise?

_A hair ruffle._

_"– 'm here, Hiro. I'll never leave you alone okay? Never."_

* * *

When Hiro woke again, this time he noticed the industrial-gray, flat, concrete ceiling.

He closed his eyes and resigned himself to the fact that he was not home but somewhere where he was not free, somewhere where he was held against his will – in other words, kidnapped.

The panic attack from before –  _hours before? days before? Time was hard to tell in here_  – had been the worst that he had experienced ever yet.

It had been a while since his last one, and Tadashi had always,  _always_  been there to help him out each time he had been close to panicking. So it had never gotten bad enough that he had blacked out...

Hiro tilted his head around and sighed when he saw the same gray interior of the room.

He couldn't help but feel acute disappointment that the whole thing was not a nightmare. Slowly sitting up on the bed and taking a long look around the room again, he vainly tried to break the illusion but everything – the blanket, the lumpy pillow, the hospital smell – it was all telling him that this was not a dream.

Every time he breathed, twinges of pain came from the back of his throat – probably an aftereffect of the abuse his throat had gone through yesterday. He could barely make a raspy sound with his dry throat, and the teen flinched from the pain when he tried to breathe a little deeper.

Hiro winced when moving his hands to pull the blanket off of himself – he looked down at them to see a mess of small scratches and a large bruise on the edge of one hand.

_Wha – oh._

His fall to the floor yesterday – no, make that several falls and some hard pounding against the door – had left their mark.

The teen carefully examined his left hand, where there was yellowish purple bruise –  _desperate banging against a metallic, unyielding surface_  – was covered with a sheen of something oily.

Carefully sniffing at the substance, Hiro poked at and felt it between his fingers to finally placed the substance as antibiotic cream.

_Antibiotic cream? The kidnapper cared enough to put medication on my bruises?_

He flexed his hand, only to flinch from the pain.

 _I should leave it alone for now,_ Hiro decided. _Even a small flex of the hands is extremely painful._

The teen slowly sat up with the other hand under him for support, wary of getting another wave of pain from anything else that hurt.

Distractedly, he noticed that he was back in the bed covered by the blanket.

_Huh, I'm in the bed again. Maybe the kidnapper is not as cold-hearted as he seems?_

Carefully shaking his head to test for any remaining headaches, the teen glanced in the direction of the corner where the locked door – presumably the exit – was.

The corner was dark, like before, and Hiro had no doubt that the door was still closed and locked.

With a small shrug, he got off the bed. _Well... it never hurts to check again... and the kidnapper may have forgotten._

Remembering to check his balance, he carefully took small steps, moving slowly to not antagonize everywhere that hurt.

After taking several cautious steps with a hand on the bed, Hiro frowned as he stood up easily with no support.

 _Strange_ , he thought, slowly making his way to the hidden corner.  _Not so dizzy anymore. Maybe the last time I woke, the smoke inhalation and the chloroform was affecting me more than I thought?_

With another shrug, he dismissed the thought when he came to face the locked door again. Quickly stepping up towards the doorknob, Hiro tried turning the doorknob hopefully, to find it was still locked tight.

The second, much sharper disappointment finalized everything.  _Yup, this makes things official. I_ am  _kidnapped and... stuff._

Hiro looked back at the main area of the room, nursing gloomy thoughts when he only saw gray. _This room is designed to keep me isolated... and it's already driving me crazy._

Turning back, the teen crouched and examined the doorknob, looking carefully to check that he hadn't missed a slight dip in the metal or a hole under the knob.

Sighing when he found none, Hiro stood from his crouch, trying the doorknob again without any energy.

_No keyhole in sight... Can't exactly test my nonexistent lockpicking skills if there aren't any locks to pick in the first place..._

Still facing the door, a hand still on the unyielding doorknob, he leaned his forehead against the cool metal door and tried not to be upset and depressed at the prospect of staying in the colorless room.

_I just want to go home._

After a few moments of depressed silence, Hiro shook out his head and glared at the door, a glint of defiance in his eyes.

 _Alright, get going, genius. If I'm going to get out of here, either someone has to rescue me, or I have to work out an escape plan. No time to panic or be all depressed._  Brushing a hand through his messy and tangled hair, Hiro tilted his head as he thought.  _Look at things from a new angle... hmm..._

After a couple of seconds' thought, Hiro began to look around himself with determined eyes.  _I've played escape-strategy games before, and all escape plans need materials and observation of the environment._ His eyes came back to the locked metal door. _Alright, Hiro Hamada, take things slow, keep calm. Think of this as a game, a puzzle_. _What would be the first 'mission' if this was a game?_

The answer came immediately, along with a facepalm.  _Explore the whole place, duh. ...Sometimes I question why I'm called a genius..._

Hiro began inspecting the cold metallic door inch by inch.  _Darn, the hinges are on the other side. I've watched some movies where the spy escapes because he does something to the hinges, but I guess the kidnapper knew about that already..._

Turning back towards the room, Hiro began to scour the walls and floor, finding nothing of consequence. He only stopped in his search when he came to the wall-sized board.

 _This is a holoboard... or was it called a smartboard?_ Hiro placed a hand under his chin, trying to remember where he saw one. _I think I saw some at Tadashi's lab... A girl with glasses was using it for some kind of computer programming, aligning different parts of the variables as she brainstormed ideas..._

The tech he and Tadashi used in the garage was a type of modified touch-screen, where they had to use the surface of the screen to draw on, either using fingers or attached digital pen; the holoboard was new tech that allowed interaction with a holograph, getting a 3D sort of free-space to think things out. It was a pretty great tech invented several years ago found in engineering colleges, though until this point, Hiro had never used, nor needed one.

Feeling around the edges of the board, Hiro looked for a power button, but found the model name on the side with the specifications of the tech instead.

_The model is a little old, but it seems to have a pretty decent – woah._

A small brush of his hand against the screen had brought it to life, displaying a holographic display of an equation from basic physics theory.

 _That was unexpected..._  Hiro thought as he fiddled with the equation, intuitively trying different hand motions to discover the main specifics in using the holoboard. Sufficiently distracted from his mission of escape, the teen took a closer look at the equation, wondering what the holoboard was doing in a place like... well, like this.

He only noticed the conspicuous mistake when he sent the equation spinning slowly in place.  _Wait a minute – that part of the equation..._ He tapped on the board and zoomed in, interested in the equation despite his wariness.  _The algebraic form of the second law of thermodynamics is not supposed to have the quarks and bordons on the same side..._

Hiro absentmindedly rearranged the bordon to the correct position, then looked over the formula again until he was satisfied with the accuracy. When he was finished rearranging the variables, he turned away from the board to realize that there were better things he could be doing right now than correcting erroneous formulas.

 _Whoops, there's my inner perfectionist coming out..._  Shaking his head in exasperation at his own actions, the teen continued to explore the room, not noticing the board turning blank behind him.

Standing in front of the desk, Hiro first flipped through the stack of thick books. Their covers were boring variations of cool colors with streaks of black and gray, and the stuff inside barely had any pictures, only filled with complicated mathematical equations and advanced physics theory that he vaguely remembered seeing in one of Tadashi's textbooks.

 _...Physics? And some... theoretical thingy? Weren't these topics related to advanced engineering and some robotics?_ The presence of the books instilled an inexplicable disquiet in Hiro, for some reason that he couldn't put a finger on.

_Why would these books be here?_

A dark, cynical thought rose from the corner of his mind.  _Was this why I was taken, to build something that requires this knowledge? ...Would the kidnapper... kill me... if I can't do whatever he wants me to?_

He gave a small shaky huff of breath to dismiss the thought.  _Heh, no way. I mean, murder just doesn't happen nowadays... I hope._

Shuddering at the dark conclusion his imagination came up with, the teen decided that for now, it wasn't the most important thing.

Putting the books aside, Hiro's attention was next drawn to a cloth-covered tray that he didn't remember being there when he had first woken in the isolated room. Carefully taking the cloth by the corner, the teen uncovered the tray to find a bowl of lukewarm cream soup, several small loaves of bread, and a lukewarm cup of what smelled like hot cocoa.

As if reacting to the food, a timely loud grumble came from his stomach.

Clutching his stomach to quell the worst of the rumbling, Hiro grimaced at the sharp hunger he felt.

 _Argh, when was the last time I ate? ...The morning of the showcase?_ He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, and he had already been feeling the hunger by the end of the showcase... _So, maybe a day?_

But as he instinctively reached for the bread to eat, a thought brought his arm up short.

... _How do I know that the food doesn't have anything in it?_

The teen clenched at his midriff, willing his complaining stomach to stop.  _I really don't know what – or_ who _I'm dealing with... If this was Yama or some street gang, there might be drugs involved – I'll have to try to endure the hunger as long as I can..._

Neglecting the thundering growl of his stomach, he covered the tray of tempting (but questionable) food and turned to the desk drawers with a mutter. "Gotta find a way out of here first..."

Hiro hurriedly jerked open all the drawers, trying to ignore the food on the desk and the faint but tantalizing scent coming from it, promising to take away his stomach's protests.

The discoveries he had made from the drawers were disappointing and didn't do much in distracting him from the food: there were two pencils in the top drawer and, well,  _nothing_. The rest of the drawers were all empty, and all his efforts to try and take the drawers out from the desk were foiled when he found them welded onto the desk itself. The walls behind the desk was bare with no outlets whatsoever.

_I can't shift, much less lift the desk either. ...What do I do with two pencils?_

Frustrated, he combed his messy locks back with his fingers, thinking through anything he could do with pencils that might do...  _something_.

_Another angle... another angle... Well, I could use them to deface the stupid walls. ...Not that the gray of the graphite will do much difference in decor._

With a sigh, the teen placed the pencils on the desk and moved on, coming back to the place where he had woken up – the bed.

_Alright... Check the empty space under the bed...which is way too small to hide under. Try shifting the bed... aaand I think it's bolted to the floor. What the heck is this place, a prison?_

A prison...

At the thought of the room as a prison, a shadow passed the teen's eyes, compelling him to pause in his futile shoving of the bed to take a calm, soothing breath to drive the darkness away.  _Just... Okay. Moving on..._

The next wall was bare, with nothing on it. Hiro glanced at it, wondering depressedly who would deliberately design a room with no windows.  _A window right here would have been perfect. A view down to the harbor, and this would have been an okay place to stay in... I hope this is not underground..._

His dark musings were interrupted when he found a dome-like structure with a blinking red light at the corner of the ceiling.

Hiro blinked up at it, spooked by its presence.  _Is that...a security camera?_

It was.

A chill ran down the younger Hamada's back. Someone had been watching him.

 _Since when did they – are there any more cameras?_  The teen peered around the ceiling to find that it was the only one in the main room.

He opened the bathroom door to check inside for more cameras, but didn't find any surveillance materials. He even checked the mirror in case it was a two way mirror – but thankfully, it was only a cabinet holding some disposable toiletries – toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo and soap.

He gave a small sigh of relief at the lack of cameras, though he was still wary over finding hidden surveillance material. It would have been really, really creepy if there had been cameras in the bathroom.

 _Talk about no privacy,_ Hiro thought, shaking his head.

Belatedly, the teen began searching around the bathroom for some sort of opening, maybe a window, but the only opening he could find was the tiny ventilation shaft high on the ceiling.

Before another stab of hopelessness could be felt, Hiro felt a spark of excitement when he remembered one café-regular commenting that her neighbor sang in the shower, giving the rest of residents of the apartment-complex a headache from the horrible singing.

 _If someone can hear horrible singing, it would mean that sound carries through the ventilation shafts, theoretically... Maybe if I am_ really _loud..._

"Hel – " Hiro paused, trying to swallow as his dry voice cracked with an unbearable wave of pain.

 _I need water,_  he thought as he turned to the sink.

Thankfully, the tap was working fine, and Hiro doubted the kidnapper rigging the _water_ from the tap itself. Taking a long drink of cool, refreshing water, the teen tested his voice and spoke as loudly as he could, only to hear only a soft but hoarse voice.

The water hadn't done much in soothing his voice, only quelling a bit of the rumbling of his stomach.

_What I'd do for some of Aunt Cass's hot chicken noodle soup right now..._

Looking back up at the vent, Hiro wondered how to get his soft voice to carry.

 _Perhaps I can speak right up against the vent?_ Glancing around the bathroom, he looked for something to stand on, then remembered the chair from the next room.

Ignoring the camera for now, Hiro dragged in the chair from the main room and climbed up as close to the vent as possible and began to yell.

"Hey! Anyone there! Help – " He stopped when another surge of pain came from his throat.

 _Ahh, there goes that idea..._ He thought, brushing a hand against his neck. _I don't think I should be using my voice for a while... Maybe I'll try again when this heals up._

Slowly getting down from the chair, Hiro went to the sink and took another long drink. He had hoped more water would soothe more of the irritated throat tissue and his hunger, but the water did close to nothing to alleviate the pain in his throat nor to soften the pangs from his stomach.

Doing his best to forget the tempting tray sitting on the desk, the teen focused on searching for items that might help in his escape. Meticulously scanning the bathroom, Hiro checked every nook and cranny he came across – but besides a clean set of clothes and towel on a shelf, he came up with nothing.

With another frustrated swipe at his messy hair, Hiro left the bathroom and looked back around the main room again.

Toiletries, books, bedsheets and blanket, pencils, towels... There really wasn't anything that would help in his escape.

As the teen tried to stave off the oncoming disappointment and despair  _again_ , his eye caught sight of the still-activated holoboard. The equation had changed while he had not been looking, with the new formula having to do with the hypothetical level of entropy when introducing a radioactive wave into the system. Again, there was a glaring mistake in the equation.

A chill ran down Hiro's back as his earlier misgivings about the presence of the theoretical books and formula on the smartboard came back.  _When did the equation change? And why is there a mistake in this one too?_

He stepped up to the board and fiddled with the hologram, but no matter what he did, he couldn't bring back the equation from before.

 _So... the kidnapper wants me to solve the equations?_ The teen glanced back at the blinking camera on the ceiling.  _The security camera must be there to keep track of what steps I used to solve the equations – and of course, to monitor me._

Hiro's eyebrows came together, forming a small frown on his face.

 _On TV shows, the kidnappers generally don't have video surveillance on their hostages...unless it was in the middle of a super-complicated conspiracy. But the presence of a camera means... my kidnapper_ planned _this out? Planned for me to solve equations? But the question is – who would? And why? This equation is something covered in a college-level physics class... why get_ me _to solve these?_

Full of questions and uneasiness at what the answers would mean for his wellbeing, the teen dragged the chair back from the bathroom and placed it under the corner with the camera. Stepping up to get a better look, Hiro was dismayed to find that he was still much too short to reach it, even with the boost from stacking up the books on the chair. After several minutes of fruitless jumping, the teen sighed and gave up.

 _I really should have listened to Aunt Cass when she told me to drink more milk,_  Hiro thought ruefully, shaking his head at himself.

Hiro squinted at the camera; from what he could see, it looked like it had a night-vision lens and a standard audio system connected to the camera.

A silly idea popped into his head as he prepared to get down from the chair.

_Since the kidnapper was nice enough to put me back on the bed and put medicine on my scrapes and bruises... maybe..._

Getting as close to the camera as he could while still staying in the camera's field of view, Hiro made his best pleading face – not unlike the puppy eyes he had given his brother on the day of the fire – and asked, "Please... let me go. My family... My brother and Aunt will really be worried. Please?"

Only silence answered him.

Waiting a full minute for some kind of response, Hiro sighed when nothing changed.

 _So much for bad guys having a heart and being nice. I would have thought the 'worried family' card would have worked._ Hiro thought as he looked longingly at the door, wishing again that he could just go home.

"What do you really want from me, anyway." Hiro depressedly muttered, slowly getting down from the chair, not verbalizing his half-formed theories of the kidnapper's motive.

His stomach growled again, reminding him again of the food a few feet away.

Suddenly, a chime came from somewhere behind him. Startled from the unexpected noise, Hiro almost lost his footing trying to turn around quickly. When he had staggered upright, looking around for the source of the sound, he saw a popup message on the holoboard.

_[The bathroom is free of surveillance and the food is not poisoned.]_

As he processed the message, another wave of disappointment filled Hiro, and the built-up frustration from his search around the room burst forth. The teen angrily glared in the direction of the camera.

"I asked to be let free, not whether the  _food_  was _poisoned_ ," Hiro spat out as loudly as he dared. It still hurt a lot to speak, and he didn't want to overuse his already painful throat, but the situation was  _aggravating_.

"And aren't bathrooms supposed to be surveillance-free in the first place?" He yelled, his hoarse voice low with anger. The teen glowered at the blinking red light. Turning his back to the holoboard, he muttered angrily. "...and how am I supposed to trust the word of someone who kidnaps people?"

Kicking petulantly at the closest object, the desk, Hiro glared at the floor, trying to ignore the grumbles from his stomach.

* * *

A few minutes later, the tray was empty. The cup of cocoa only held the dregs of chocolate at the bottom, the bowl was scraped clean, and only a few crumbs were left on the plate.

The sound of a shower running could be heard from the bathroom.

* * *

After the refreshing shower ( _The change of clothes was about two sizes too large for him, but it wasn't like he could complain. Clean clothes were clean clothes_ ), Hiro came back into the main room and sighed again at the sight of the stifling walls.

The blankness of the walls were beginning to really bother him, the uniformity and bareness distressing for someone always surrounded by color and organized chaos in his room.

Lying back on the bed with the towel, his thoughts automatically shifted to his older brother. He would have immediately snorted at his description of his side of the room ('organized _chaos!_ '), probably launching into a playful argument that it was a ' _chaotic_ mess,  _nothing_ organized _about it_ '.

And Hiro would have argued back that it was definitely 'organized _chaos_ ' no matter what Tadashi said, because  _he_  knew exactly where everything was, and obviously, that meant it was _not_   _chaotic_ mess _._

At the thought of his older brother, Hiro's slightly better mood from the food and shower dipped again to gloom. Sitting up, the teen hid his face under the towel as he tried to focus on drying his hair.

Soon, his hair was as dry as he could get with the towel. Hiro looked around the room again and found his eyes automatically lured to the holoboard that was still on, slowly rotating the equation in place. The teen couldn't help wincing when he glimpsed the mistake again as the hologram spun.

Despite the small warnings in his head that  _solving the equation_  was most likely  _exactly_  what the kidnapper wanted from him, Hiro couldn't help but be bothered by the equation; it was getting to the point that it was even more annoying than the uniformly-gray room.

 _This one and the one before are both equations of basic theories and laws in physics, written in a parabolic algebraic form – I could have written this in my sleep when I was_ eight _– it's something a normal high school student can figure out!_ Hiro grumpily thought.

_That is, probably... if it was a smart high school student._

Hiro rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. The hot shower had done wonders to his too-tense body, and he couldn't help yawning as his mental fatigue caught up.

Shaking his head to wake himself up, he looked back at the equation on the board.

_I've slept long enough. Now, what to do with this..._

The teen rubbed at his eyes as he tried to think of what to do.

 _The problem is... I really don't know if the kidnapping really has anything to do with me solving... no,_ fixing _these equations..._

The teen chewed on his bottom lip as he debated the pros and cons of rearranging the formula. He wavered between the choices of leaving it be (probably going against the kidnapper's most likely agenda), and just... fixing it to get it out of his sight.

 _Obviously, the right answer is to leave the holoboard as it is and_ not _fix the equation,_  Hiro thought, trying to distract himself from looking at the board again.  _Only, that annoyingly misplaced variable is bothering me like an itch I can't reach..._

The teen did his best in diverting his attention from the holoboard – doodling in the physics book with the pencil, trying to change the shade of the already gray walls by sketching Baymax on it (he could only just see it if he tilted his head enough), actually trying to  _read_  one of the theory books – but his gaze continued to be pulled back to the board and its annoying mistake.

Approximately a few minutes (but what felt like several hours) later, Hiro slammed the theory book shut, then threw up his hands in disgust and made a snarl that sounded remarkably like a 'fine, fine, FINE!'.

The teen got off the bed and approached the board with a great huff, then rearranged the formula with three quick swipes. He then took a satisfied second to contemplate the now correct formula, when the equation disappeared from the screen.

Before Hiro had a chance to respond with something other than the involuntary sound of outrage that exploded from his lips, another equation popped up.

It was a formula using variables and symbols that Hiro had never seen before, and the complexity of the equation was sending his head spinning as it tried to catch up.

Hiro scowled up at the screen and muttered, "...This is impossible to solve." The teen turned to the camera and shook his head firmly, crossing his arms over his chest.

When the equation still remained, he swiped at the holographic equation and sent it spinning so fast that it was unreadable. Feeling a sort of vindictive glee, Hiro went further and graffitied the spinning equation with the pen tool he found, crossing the entire equation out with dark black lines and writing 'impossible' in block letters next to the still-spinning equation in case the kidnapper didn't get the hint.

A few seconds later, the graffiti he drew disappeared and another message popped up behind the now clean equation (still spinning ferociously) with a chime.

_[There is an answer to this equation.]_

Hiro didn't react to the message, crossing his arms even tighter than before and petulantly glaring at the board.  _I have a feeling I am going to hate that chiming sound real soon..._

"So, 'there is an answer to this problem'... and you want  _me_  to solve it." Hiro said mockingly, ignoring the twinge in his throat as he spoke as loudly as he could. With a huff, the teen turned away from the board. "As if. I'm not going to help by doing what you want."

Another chime came from the board, and Hiro read it from the corner of his eyes, still half-turned away from the message. But what he saw made him turn fully towards the board again.

_[If you solve all the equations presented to you, you will soon be released with no harm done.]_

Hiro gave an incredulous look at the message, and read it again to make sure he had read it correctly.  _Solve... all the equations? Released?_

"What is this, some kind of joke?  _Only_  solving the equations?" He croaked out, incredulous at what he was seeing. His arms had dropped to his sides from the surprise.

The message remained as the equation slowed down from its out-of-control spin.

Hiro again crossed his arms and looked away sullenly. "I won't do it." He glanced at the equation again.

"Why do you need  _me_  to solve  _this_? Gosh, why did you have to  _kidnap_  me? I don't know enough physics – at least, I assume this is physics – to solve this equation!"

The teen swallowed down an oncoming cough. "Just... Just submit this to the physics department at SFIT! I'm sure there are physics genii there..."

Taking a slow breath to soothe what irritation his short monologue caused, Hiro looked over at the board just in time to see the previous message disappear.

Again swallowing down his pain, Hiro spoke as forcefully as he could, ignoring the tearing burn at the back of his throat. "Now let me go. My family's probably worried about me."

Hiro couldn't help but feel hope rise again in the silence that followed – that feeling just wouldn't go away no matter how often it was disappointed. He waited for the kidnapper to answer, unseeingly watching the holo-equation slow down in its rotations.

After a pause that seemed to last a lifetime for the teen, another message popped up with a chime.

_[Your family's safety largely depends on your cooperation.]_

Hiro blinked in surprise. "...What?"

As if in anticipation of the question, another message quickly followed with a chime.

_[Did you know that a certain cat-themed café sits on top of the main piping for the rest of the street?]_

Blindsided by the seeming non sequitur, Hiro blinked again until he realized what it was talking about.  _Wait, main piping...?_

But before Hiro had time to absorb the message, the equation and message disappeared, replaced by a black rectangular screen. Startled by the sudden change, Hiro unconsciously took a step back.

As he waited for something to change, the teen felt a deep unease from the previous message.  _A cat-themed_ _café... T_ _here's nothing this guy can do to threaten my family... right?_

The black screen in front of him changed before his imagination took off, showing a video feed of something inanimate.

For the longest of time, Hiro did not know what he was seeing. The video's main focus was on an large industrial pipe with a faded warning sign that said 'Warning, Gas Pipeline' in huge block letters. A few moments later, the younger Hamada found the point of interest in the engraved word on the pipe and the smaller, handwritten words next to it. An 'Oakside' and '3rd Broderick Avenue'.

 _That's – ! That's my street!_ Hiro stepped towards the board, but before he could do anything, the video feed changed.

This time, the video had less light and only showed a cramped view of a device attached to the curve of a large joint of a gas piping. Hiro connected the dots quite easily.

_What is that doing on the gas pi – no, no way –_

The device was something that was remote-controlled to do... something, and Hiro had a good idea of what that could be.

As he tried to make sure that it really was what the device did, a tiny screen on the side of the device lit up with the words 'Command Received', followed by an blinking orange light placed next to three cylindrical objects wired to the receiver transfer panel.

Before Hiro could determine exactly what the cylinders were, the video switched off, and another message popped up with the chime alert.

_[Consider that to be your... incentive.]_

Although Hiro had not gotten an in-depth look at the device attached to the pipe, there were a very few options of what it  _could be._ It was either a remote-controlled explosive, or a toy car motor  _–_  and as the kidnapper didn't seem like a person who would stick a remote-controlled  _toy motor_  to a gas pipeline for fun...

 _The explosive could be big or small depending on what is in the cylinders... Smallest explosion might not damage the pipes and just leave a small fire, which is still dangerous, but if that has super explosive chemicals... and having an explosion next to the_ main  _gas piping of the street_ _..._   _It'll blow up the_ entire block _, maybe even the entire street!_

In his shock at the implications of a large explosion  _under the café_ , Hiro was struck dumb and stood unseeing anything in front of him. As he tried to get over his shock and tried to come up with some kind of response to seeing the  _very real_  threat to his family that would probably affect his entire  _street_ , another message appeared with a chime.

_[As you can see, it is child's play for someone to... light a small spark.]_

At the message, the teen shook his head in denial.  _He surely can't be planning on letting that explosive – that's hundreds of people! He wouldn't endanger that many people –_

But a dark corner of the teen's mind interrupted, whispering, _How do you know that he_ wouldn't _?_

In his stupor of trying to understand _why_  someone would want to hurt other people for  _equations_ , the younger Hamada hadn't noticed that another message had come – but once the content of the message got through his dazed state, the alarm that swept through him jerked him back into reality.

_[The cylinders contain a concentrated solution of nitroglycerin. The device is now armed, as you've already seen.]_

"You – you–!" Hiro's voice cracked, and he went into a coughing fit, although the teen still faced the message on the board with shock, disbelief, anger, and  _hate_  in his eyes.

Another chime.

_[Of course, the authorities may suspect foul play, and you may be rescued in the end. But in the end, there will still be two bodies. Shall we proceed?]_

Immediately, Hiro shouted, " _No_!" falling again into a violent coughing fit. Choking his coughs down, the genius of the Hamada family fumbled with the screen, desperately trying to get the equation to show again.

"I'll do it, I'll solve the stupid equation, just don't –" A terrible hacking echoed in the small room, but Hiro quelled it with a fortifying breath and continued, frantic that the kidnapper got his message. " –  _don't touch my family_!"

A tense silence, only broken by the occasional cough, filled the gray room. Soon, an inappropriately cheerful chime rent the air with another message.

_[I am glad we understand each other perfectly.]_

Hiro gave a dirty look back at the camera that was behind him, hoping it conveyed his  _hate_  enough.

"... How –" The younger Hamada stopped, coughing again.

_Crap...I can barely hear my own voice._

The teen stepped up to the board and wrote, his angry letters jagged. ' _How do I know that you aren't making this up?_ _'_

Another tense silence later, a chime accompanied the following ominous note.

_[You don't.]_

A few seconds later, the final message had faded away, and the board was again displaying only the complicated equation from before.

Hiro remained standing for a few moments more, staring down the equation, waiting for another message.

Seconds-minutes-hours passed (time was really hard to tell here), and when his legs began to feel tired from standing, Hiro turned away from the board and sat down heavily on the bed.

Hiding his face in his hands, Hiro tried to fight back his frustrated tears.

"...Why me?" He whispered brokenly, voice heavy with despair.  _Why does it have to be_ me _?_

There was only silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the scientific terms from this chapter on will follow my (and songdreamer's) Laws of Nature. 
> 
> ...Sorry, actual science folks, we butchered all your vocab and laws and element names to come up with something new.  
> ...at least it sounds legit?


	4. A World Without Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read this chapter before reading chapter 4 of "Picture Me Without You".

_Journal - Day 5 (Maybe?)_

_I bet the stupid kidnapper thinks I'll stop marking up the theory books if he gave me this notebook. Well, guess what? I'm not!_

{The sentence is followed by a rough sketch of a face with a tongue stuck out}

 

_(Later, dunno what time)_

_ARGEKJWHO!_

{A large unrecognizable scribble that devolves into a black tornado scribble fills half of the page} _  
_

_Who does he think he is? He's all like, 'Your days wil be free as long as you finish at least two equations per day'. Hmph! Then he goes on and is like, 'All possible escape routes are blocked, blah blah blah.' As if! Just wait, I'll show him!_

_Wait... Is it even a guy behind the board? It could be a woman... Yeesh, don't want to think about that, 'cause the person who took me away from the fire was definitely a man... wait... maybe a grunt? ...Nooo, that means this is bigger than a simple crime! A super-complex conspiracy? It means she could definitely get enough manpower to get bomb materials..._

_Wait, the food is all microwaveable convenience store food, so maybe it's not some kind of supervillain... 'cause if he/she had enough manpower, the food would not be store food, cause that would just be too much money... argh, I'm getting a headache._

_...Well, guess what you stupid idiot! Whatever you're planning? You're not gonna succeed!_

* * *

After finishing up the short journal entry, Hiro made another angry scribble-doodle in the theory books, then turned back to the bathroom to try work on his latest escape attempt again.

 _I know the guy said yelling into the vent was futile because the room was soundproofed and that the entire building was empty of anyone who would hear or care, but..._  The resolve in his eyes had become much dimmer than the first day of capture, but still sparked with renewed energy as he stood up.  _I've got to try._

Stretching carefully and balancing on the stack of books, he pushed the sharpened toothbrush up towards the ceiling. The flattened and slightly shaking end of the plastic barely touched the screw when the book stack shifted slightly to the left, causing him to fall on the cold tile for the fourth time that day.

As he landed, he heard a small  _snap_  from his hand; the makeshift screwdriver had snapped into two pieces, much to his dismay. After a few minutes of contemplating the unfairness and the frustration of how things just were not working out, he gave up trying to fix the pieces (there was nothing to fix it  _with_  nor anything else long and thin enough that would work) and placed the broken bits of toothbrush in the cabinet above the sink.

 _There's got to be a way... think, think,_  think _!_

But for the past four? five days? He  _had_  tried to come up with something with what little he had - and it wasn't much. Checking the makeup of all the chemicals in the room, throwing things at the camera, even attempting to fit a piece of paper between the cracks of the unbudging doorway - they all ended up being a waste of his time and energy.

The worst chemical corrosion he could make right now was barely good enough to shine the scruffs on the metal door (Toothpaste was used for metal polishing and erasing scruff marks from shoes in emergencies, if he remembered Honey Lemon's passing remark correctly); as for the projectiles aimed at the camera, his skills in throwing things at a target remained the same - cringe-worthy. The efforts trying to get paper through the door... Did he even need to  _think_  about it when it was obvious that it failed?

The latest effort: using the sharpened toothbrush to try unscrew the ventilation grill up on the ceiling. A few hours ago he had received a pencil sharpener not five minutes after his second pencil's tip broke off; immediately after sharpening his two pencils, he had then broken the sharpener apart for its tiny hidden blade, then sharpened the only thin enough object he had to make a temporary screwdriver. And it had looked like the tool would work, too. He had succeeded in turning the screw a little to the left, but now the plastic was broken...

In all actuality, he had no idea what to do even if he had gotten the screws undone from the vent. The resulting hole was obviously going to be too small for him to fit even his head in, much less the rest of his body. He had hoped that there was some kind of engine behind it, but so far, he couldn't even manage to unscrew the vent, much less retrieve the parts of the ventilation motor.

 _I want to break something,_  he thought, grinding his teeth together.  _I can't come up with_  anything  _right now._

The stupid kidnapper was most frustrating and stupidly amazing in the most annoying way because every single escape plan was thwarted by something already in place that prevented the plan from working.

But like every other time he had been frustrated with a dead end and no ideas, he felt a phantom rustle of a warm hand on his hair, with whispers of  _look for a new angle, I'm not giving up on you_ _,_  echoing in his head and repeating itself around his ears.

 _Hallucinating and hearing things... the room really is driving me crazy,_  he thought, ruefully shaking his head at himself.

In the meantime, he was doing everything to get his brain to think of ways to escape. Doodling out the outlines of the room, making yet another list of things he had on hand, knocking hard on the walls for a hopefully forgotten secret passage, slamming his head on the desk muttering  _useless empty brain_  as he tried to come up with ideas - he had even gone as far as try to do a handstand against the wall, trying to simulate Tadashi's upside-down shakedown that had sparked the microbots idea.

But all that came back to him was a sore hip from crashing too hard into the cold ground (from the headstand) and a memory of a barely-hidden chuckle that would always follow after he did something silly. The whispery memory-chuckle would sometimes reverberate into a full blown belly-laugh, just like the times when Tadashi caught on that his laugh was not so secretive as he thought.

Rolling his eyes at the phantom sounds he kept hearing in the back of his mind, he morbidly wondered whether something was seriously wrong with his brain. _I'm hearing Tadashi everywhere, Jedi-style._

 _Ouch,_ he thought with a wince, rubbing at the sore spot on his hip. _Now that's going to bruise._  His mind wandered back to his family.  _It's almost been a week. Wasn't that long enough to find clues and track me down?_ _Why weren't they coming?_

The past couple of days had gone by in a blur, everything a monotone and an unchanging gray all day long. The equations were the only things that changed in the room, and he had already lost count how many he had done. It was the only thing he could focus on, as everything else - the escape plans, doodles and sketches on the books, and the moping of  _why is no one coming_  - was starting to sound like a broken record, repeating itself over and over again.

He wasn't even sure how long it had been since he was kidnapped, because the past few days he had sometimes gotten confused keeping track of  _when_  it was, wondering if he had already marked down the day or not. It could have been four days, instead of day '5' as he had written down, or it could even have already been a week since waking up in this room.

A click came from the door; he turned just in time to catch the tray sliding to a stop under the door and a paneling on the lower part of the door close. The tray held the usual dinner: bread and some sort of soup, with a cup of orange juice.

He could try to mess with the paneling, but it had been wired so that a touch anywhere near the panel gave him a nasty shock that left a stinging sensation for half a day. The blanket and towel had some sort of conductor in it that it did nothing to protect him from the shock, much allow him to touch the panel. He had considered using water to short-circuit the whole thing, but decided that it was too dangerous. He didn't know exactly how powerful the reaction would be - it could just blow apart the door, which meant that he would be in the way. Maybe a last resort.

Glancing at the tray of food on the floor, he couldn't help but turn away from the food, not having an appetite at all.

_Wasn't it clam chowder a few meals ago? Normally, I like clam chowder, but now..._

He could almost hear Tadashi's chiding tone at his lack of appetite.  _Seriously, you need to eat more, bonehead, kidnapped or not; y_ _ou have to keep up your strength. Also, don't_ _expect to grow taller by eating like a bird all the time._

Inwardly grumbling at Tadashi for being a mother hen even when he  _wasn't_  around, he slowly took the tray to the desk and began to eat.

The soup was harder to swallow today, and it had nothing to do with having the same dinner menu for the past couple of days.

* * *

_Journal - Day 10_

_For some reason, the stupid guy has forgotten to turn off the holoboard last night and tonight. I'm currently in bed, pretending to study while I'm trying to remember what happened today. If I don't, I don't think I'll be able to mark the days correctly anymore. This journal is really helping out in keeping track of the time passing. If my starting date was correct, then it is Day 10._

_(It's been ten days since_ _the_  – _since I've woken up here. Why aren't they coming for me? Has the kidnapper hidden me away that well? Are they looking in the wrong places? Do they have no clues? Do they think I'm – that the kidnapper will send a ransom note? I want to give them a hint, but I don't know where I am either...)_

{A small doodle of several black clouds}

_My body is really tired, and I am falling asleep, but the stupid equation just has to spin right that moment, making a flickering shadow, waking me up._

_The holoboard is not letting me sleep and I CAN'T TURN. IT. OFF. I've tried its power button that I've found hidden near the wall, but the button's broken._

_It's weird... Before, it had been turning off at 'night', or about two hours? three hours? after the third tray of the day, dinner, arrives._

_Though, I might be wrong. There are no clocks here._

_No windows either._

_Anyway, the holoboard turning off was the only reason I knew that a day had passed. Now? Now I have to rely on the lights that turn on and off, and I've found out recently that depends on whether or not I am 'working'._

_Day 6, I had been fiddling around with a variable in one of the equations because it was interesting (there's nothing else to do, and sometimes the equations can be fun to solve), and I hadn't noticed the holoboard turning off, which is supposedly a signal that the work is done for the day. There was no warning chime that always came five minutes before lights out, and I continued to fiddle around with the equation until I fell asleep at the desk. I woke up the next day with a small crick in my neck, problem solved and still sitting at the desk._

_So... lights don't tell time, and the five minute warning chime doesn't come regularly either. (Talk about good timing, there's the five minute warning.)_

_Am I even sleeping enough? I've heard some stories where the jailors gave isolated prisoners irregular sleeping patterns to drive them crazy..._

_...Am I crazy?_

_...What day is today? Friday? No, wait, the showcase was Thursday, so... Sunday?_

_Today's breakfast should have been pancakes... and there would have been midnight snacks with the leftover donuts from the café..._

{Suddenly, the handwriting becomes messy, then progressively gets messier until it becomes a scrawled line that goes off the page}

_See? The stupid guy turned the light off already. It hasn't been five minutes! He's a stupid idiotic bonehead who can't tell time! And he wakes me up too early... I'm so tired all the time..._

* * *

"Hey, Hiro, time to wake up!"

Hiro opened his eyes to see Tadashi, who was shaking him awake with an endearingly exasperated smile on his face.

"...Huh?" After several blinks and furious rubbing of eyes to check he wasn't seeing things, Hiro gazed up into Tadashi's face in disbelief. "...Tadashi?"

"Finally awake, buddy?"

" _Tadashi!_ " Hiro jumped up from the bed and tackled the older Hamada's middle, almost pushing his brother off his feet. Tadashi paused in surprise before hugging him back warmly.

 _I'm safe_ , Hiro thought, fighting back the tears that were forming behind his eyelids.  _It's going to be okay. Tadashi's here, and his hugs somehow make everything all better... not that I'd ever tell him that._

He frowned when something felt  _off_  about the hug, but the slight unease was quickly soothed away when a warm hand began rubbing circles on his lower back.

Tadashi's hesitant voice came from somewhere above him.

"Are... you okay, Hiro? Bad dream?"

Not willing to get out of the comforting hug just yet, Hiro took a shaky breath and began explaining into Tadashi's chest, his voice muffled as he told Tadashi the basics of what he remembered last.

"Y-yeah, I was in this crazy n-nightmare where there wasn't a-anyone nearby and no one would answer me and the whole room was  _all gray_  and there were  _no windows_ andthewallswere – "

His older brother interrupted him, pulling the smaller figure away from his chest to hear better.

"Whoa,  _whoa_  genius. No one would answer you and then what? Hey, hey, breathe - calm down. Whatever you said, it's  _okay_  now. You're not in a nightmare anymore, are you?"

Hiro blinked up into Tadashi's concerned face and shook his head slowly.

"...No. No, I'm not."

With a smile, Tadashi placed a hand in his hair and gave it a gentle ruffle.

"See? Nothing to worry about."

Thinking it over, Hiro returned a tentative smile to his brother, unknowingly holding him tighter and snuggling closer.

Tadashi wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close, giving him another ruffle on the back of his head that changed to steady patting on his shoulders then a wonderfully comforting backrub. Hiro frowned again as he was pulled into the hug. Something was not right, triggering the alarm bells in the back his head.

After a brief speculation on why, Hiro dismissed it as the residual effects of the horrifying dream. He soaked in the precious moments or reassurance that came from the steady backrub. After a while, he felt Tadashi pull slightly away, as if he had something to say; Hiro took the hint and stepped back to look up questioningly at his brother.

"Come on. We promised Aunt Cass we'd clean this mess up."

Looking around, the teen was confused. The room was clean, and there was nothing out of place. Glancing back up at Tadashi, he quirked an eyebrow at him to show his confusion.

"...Mess?" Hiro's eyes flicked back around the room. The bed was made, the desks had no loose paper, the books were stacked neatly... their room was in the most spotless state that he had ever seen it in. "I don't see anything needing any cleaning."

Tadashi rolled his eyes at him as he grabbed a plastic trash bag.

"Stop joking around, Hiro. There's tons of stuff around," His big brother opened up the bag and held it out to him, who was still confused as to  _what_  needed to be thrown away. "Just start putting them in here."

Blinking first at the bag then at his brother then at the plastic bag, Hiro frowned.

"...What do I put in it?"

Tadashi sighed patronizingly down at him, looking up beseechingly towards the heavens. Which, immediately deepened Hiro's slight frown into a full-blown pout.

"You  _really_  need the example, Hiro?"

Before the teen had time to respond with a witty comeback, Tadashi took the plastic bag back then proceeded to exaggeratedly pick up the model figurine on the edge of the shelf of models, unceremoniously dumping it inside.

For a few shocked seconds, Hiro couldn't believe what just happened  _right in front of_   _him_.

"...Ta -Tadashi?"

Tadashi sighed again.

"Still don't get it?"

His brother - and it was his  _brother_  who had bought half of the models on the shelf - picked up the next figurine from the shelf and discarded it into the plastic bag. A loud crash could be heard as the plastic models clashed into each other.

Hiro continued staring uncomprehendingly at the plastic bag that Tadashi was holding, missing how the older Hamada had grabbed yet  _another_  figurine from the shelf and tossed it in the bag.

The crunch of fragile figurine parts breaking apart brought the teen out from his stupor, driving him to snatch the bag away from Tadashi.

Still half in denial that the action figures were broken, Hiro glared up accusingly, minutely flinching when it met his brother's hurt and confused expression.

"...Hiro?"

For some reason, Hiro was the one that felt guilt, even though it was clearly  _Tadashi_  who was in the wrong. Shaking off the absurd and out-of-place emotion, he tried voicing his bafflement, hoping,  _no, knowing_  that there was a logical reason for his brother's actions.

"W-what are you doing? These... these... A-aren't they..."

 _Aren't they the figurines we bought with our allowances and spent weeks trying to build together? Aren't they the things you said you would save until the end of time? Aren't they the symbol of the_  Hamada bros _?_

He remained silent, struck dumb trying to form all his mixed feelings into the right  _words._  The teen continued to stare reproachfully at his older brother, wishing that the 'older brother skills' Tadashi always bragged about would  _kick in_  already and just  _know_  that he was in turmoil. But contrary to what Hiro wanted, the older Hamada slowly spoke, full of responsibility, like always.

"We still have to clear away the mess, Hiro." Then his bigger hands were carefully removing the plastic bag clutched in his hands, gently prying the fingers away. There was no light of recognition in Tadashi's eyes; it was as if he didn't  _see him_ and the clear hurt and confusion and emotions that were all over the place.

Hiro didn't respond, shocked into looking away from those oblivious eyes, covering his  _doubtingrageingbewildered_  eyes with his bangs.

When he had regained control over most of his unchecked emotions to check on what his brother was doing next, Tadashi - no, a very real lookalike - was opening the mouth of the plastic bag again and in the process of destroying another of their figurines, their pride and joy, their  _memories_.

The following crash of delicate parts breaking also broke what tenuous control he had over his emotions, and Hiro  _snapped_.

" _You're_   _not Tadashi_."

He saw Tada -  _fake_ -Tadashi stop as he was reaching for the next figure, then guardedly turn back towards him. Hiro didn't say anything, and the imposter slowly came to crouch in front of him, trying to peer through his curtain of hair.

 _If it really had been Tadashi, he would have known that something was wrong already. This is_ not _Tadashi,_ Hiro thought viciously.

Fake-Tadashi spoke softly, as if talking to someone about to crack into pieces.

"What did you say, Hiro?"

Hiro finally let the imposter meet his eyes that were blazing with righteous anger and steeled with distrust and contempt.

"I said, you're  _not Tadashi._  He - he would never -"

 _Would never stop being an older brother? Never_  not  _notice when something wasn't right? Never stop listening to him, even if it was all rambling?_

He stopped trying to say everything he wanted, knowing that the words would get all garbled and not convey what he wanted to say. Instead, he quickly snatched away the plastic bag hanging limply from a shocked hand for the second time, regressing back to childish arguments.

"...Tadashi would  _never_  throw these away!"

Glaring defiantly, Hiro almost missed the brief flicker of depression and grief in the imposter's eyes. It took him by surprise, and he tried to get a closer look, but the normally expressive eyes of his brother were quickly hidden behind a hand.

The same hand swept across Tadashi's face, emerging with a frustrated and slightly worried frown in place. Hiro remained still and observed, because just now the gestures had been all...  _Tadashi_ , no fakeness about it. And that flicker of grief... he remembered seeing it once, a long time ago.

Tadashi - maybe fake, maybe not - took another model figurine from the shelf and motioned to it with his free hand as he explained.

"Hiro... These... They aren't worth anything anymore. You were the only one to play with them."

Before the teen had a chance to reply to that shocking statement, Tadashi continued,  _that smile_  on his face _._

"... And remembering you  _hurts_."

He remembered  _that smile_. He remembered it clearly, and it felt like a punch to the stomach to see it in place again.

His arms are numb by his side, and he barely takes in what Tadashi was saying. Why is he putting on  _that smile_  from years and years ago  _now_? It didn't belong there... at least, not  _anymore_. They had  _Aunt Cass_  now. His brother had  _him_  now. There was no reason for Tadashi to have  _that smile_.

A loud regretful sigh pulled him out of his shock, and a small part of his mind noticed the plastic bag slipping away from his nerveless grip again. But most of his mind is belatedly trying to process what Tadashi just said.

 _Remembering me hurts? They aren't_  worth  _anything_   _anymore?_

Another smash of breaking parts pulled him back to attention, and Hiro again moved to make another attempt for the bag. A familiar, playful punch on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks - the feeling in his shoulder was strange - it didn't hurt, but  _tingled_. He dazedly looked up at Tadashi, rubbing at his shoulder, trying to figure out too many things at once.

Tadashi -  _fake? -_  was peering down at him with a worried expression and  _that smile_  still in place. It wasn't doing a lot in hiding the awful  _paingriefhurtsuffering_  in Tadashi's eyes like it was supposed to. Or had it always been that fragile? Did he just never notice the emotions behind  _that smile_  before?

The first time, he had seen it only vaguely when he had asked Tadashi when their parents' would come back.

The second time, he had seen it full force at the graveyard, the three of them all in black, laden with flowers.

Now, the third time, and it looked more fragile than ever - it was now a smile that looked as if it would break into a million pieces and let loose the tears if he even  _moved_  wrong.

But it was a smile that only his Tadashi could pull off.

There was something ruffling his hair again. Tadashi's face was close, and Hiro could see his brother's damp eyes that was blinking furiously to hold the waterworks back.

"Come on, Hiro. Don't you want your brother to move on from your death?"

All the thoughts whirling through his head came to a shuddering stop at those words.

"...My... death...?"

The utter consternation he was feeling that moment - he couldn't even describe it. He didn't even know where to start.

 _Why did Tadashi think I was_ dead _?_

The teen reached for Tadashi's arm, feebly tugging at the sleeve of the familiar green cardigan. He had done this countless times before, and somehow, Tadashi could tell when the gestures were just jabs for attention and when they were silent cries for comfort -  _'it's because I'm your big brother, silly'_  - somehow, his brother always just  _knew._

"But I'm not dead..." He muttered, almost to himself, voice unsure.

Finally,  _finally_ , the expected warmth surrounded the teen, although its hold was still very light.

He closed his unseeing eyes, waiting for the hug to grow stronger, tighter, warmer, inexplicably full of  _something_  that made everything bad okay -

But the encompassing hug felt a little strange this time around; had it always felt this... suffocating? He couldn't feel his hands and feet - and what was that scent of musty-burning? Cigarettes? Tadashi never smoked -

Tadashi's sorrowfully resigned voice interrupted his musings, and his eyes jerked open at the startling statement.

"I'm sorry, Hiro, but you  _are_."

 _What -?_  His confusion hiked twofold when he found his brother a short distance away and  _nowhere near hugging distance_.

Tadashi sighed regretfully and whispered something; Hiro shouldn't be able to hear it, but his brother's voice carried far, echoing all around as their surroundings grow darker and smokier.

"My little brother... you're dead."

"...What? Tadashi, I'm not -" His rebuttal was cut short when a wave of gray, gray smoke came between them, and Tadashi's figure blurred away to a faint silhouette. Hiro desperately called out when it began to move away, trying to get his brother back.

"No, Tadashi! Wait!"

Hiro tried to run after his brother, to tell him to get rid of  _that smile_ , to hug him close and remind him that  _he was here_ , but there was an unnatural numbness in his limbs, making them feel as if on puppet strings. His legs were moving, but he couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet and it felt like moving through molasses. There was something tightening around his middle, dragging him away from Tadashi's silhouette.

"Ahh! What is-! Tadashi, help m - !"

A gust of wind full of a cloyingly sweet scent swept into his face, forcing him into a coughing fit as it blew away a little of the smoke between them. His brother was standing half-turned towards him, with a heartrendingly  _sorrowful_ expression that Hiro had never seen this openly before. He had seen a flicker or two under  _that smile_  when it had been close to breaking, but even then it didn't compare to the grief Tadashi was now showing.

The overly sweet scent was getting stronger, reminding Hiro of something, but his train of thought was wholly on Tadashi, trying to reach his brother and do anything to rip away  _that smile._

His efforts in trying to get his body to work again was put at a pause when a soft comment from Tadashi echoes across the distance between them.

"Hiro... Don't come to me again," His brother's agony was plain in the soft murmur. "I wish you could stay, but spirits belong with spirits, and the living with the living... I don't want you to remain here as a ghost, Hiro. Please. I - I'll know where to find you, pinky promise - move on and wait for me there."

The awful  _realization_  and world-shattering  _shock_  come as the implications of the statement 'my little brother is dead', 'spirit', and 'ghost' finally made it into his brain.

"A gho - Tadashi, what are you talking about? I'm alive! I'm right here! I -  _I'm not dead!_ "

The force that had been slowly dragging him away from Tadashi began to earnestly  _pull_ , and Tadashi also slowly backed away. Hiro struggled, but his body wasn't moving the way he wanted - even his legs that had been moving somewhat had stopped, and his whole body felt paralyzed.

"Tadashi, no, wait - come back! I can't -" But his violent fight to get his body to  _move_  didn't stop his body from being dragged further away. "Stopit!  _Argh, move already!_ I have to get - to - Tadashi! It's a misundersta -"

A cloth stinking with the cloying scent was pushed into his face, cutting off his objections and muffling his next words. He finally recognized the smell - it was the same one from before, that night of the fire -

He began to yell into the cloth, trying not to breathe the fumes as he tried to reach his brother, but Tadashi's silhouette was already far away, the posture of his brother looking  _defeated_ and  _broken_  as it waved goodbye. A whisper of Tadashi's voice somehow reached all the way to where he was, almost as if he were right next to him.

"Goodbye, Hiro... My little brother."

Thick tendrils of smoke curled between them again, and he could no longer see Tadashi. His yells of  _noTadashicomeback_  never made it past the screen of cloth and smoke as more smoke trapped him, curling up around him. The smell was growing unbearably sweet -

Hiro woke up with a jerk, eyes wide and dilated, breaths quick and fast. The dream had ended abruptly, and the adrenaline buzzed under his skin. His heart was beating a mile a minute, and he could almost taste the mix of the cloying sweet scent and smoke that had begun all this.

The light from the holoboard placed everything in a shimmering blue glow, but he knew that it was really all gray.

His eyes began to take in the details of the room again, just like that first day he woke up, but nothing had changed - the holoboard was still in place with its slow-spinning equation, the desk was in the same spot with a messed up stack of textbooks and loose paper, the bathroom door was slightly ajar -

 _The dream made_  no sense at all _. Tadashi wasn't someone who would throw stuff away -_

A horrifying thought occurred to him.

 _I - They don't_ really _think I'm dead, do they?_

He turned his body away from the room and faced the wall, trying to stop thinking about it all and avoid looking at the bare room, but instead of the  _graygraygray_  room, he saw the gray wall with faint markings in pencil, lined up evenly -

The faint fourteen tallies that marked every day he woke up here.

There was an unbearable burn behind his eyes that blinking didn't help, and he pulled the thin blanket over himself as he curled up, just like Mochi used to do in his bed. After spending a while cocooning the blankets around himself as tightly as possible, Hiro finally let the waterworks run.

Strange enough, he didn't make a sound; there was no sobbing going on. But the tears just didn't seem to stop and continued streaming down his face.

He stayed awake for rest of the night until the light turned back on.

* * *

_Journal - Day 15_

_Today is just going to be a horrible day. I just know it. That dream..._

_Mrgh. There's breakfast. I better get working before the stupid idiot decides to do something worse._

 

_(Later, dunno when, just sometime after breakfast)_

_The idiot took away my equation. I wasn't done with it! I had just gotten an idea on how to solve it too! It would be a little difficult, but it had looked like it might work!_

_~~Ah, the equation's back~~  No, it's not. It was a different equation than the one I was working on, so I thought the stupid idiot had made a mistake and I told him, but there's no response._

_Stupid idiot is ignoring me._

 

_(Before lunch, but I think it's coming soon)_

_HE DID IT AGAIN!_

_What part of 'I WASN'T FINISHED' makes no sense?_

_But... now I'm getting paranoid. Or maybe 'paranoid' is the wrong word to use here, but I am feeling a tingling sense that something is about to go wrong... like the 'impending doom' stuff that Fred was always going on about when talking about his comics._

_I mean, the equations are either for teaching purposes (as I never really open the textbook unless I need to), to annoy me (...highly unlikely, as kidnappings don't happen just to annoy someone), or for some other purpose that I'm not aware of._

_Obviously, of the three, it has to be the last option because hey, people kidnap fourteen-year-old genii to 'teach them better' or 'annoy the genii out of their minds' all the time._

_...NOT._

{A dark cloud is scribbled on the next few lines}

_I'm just going to stop for today because - what... What?_

_THAT STUPID IDIOT NEEDS TO GO INTRODUCE HIS HEAD TO A WALL!_

_I don't even -! Just now, the STUPID IDIOT told me that since I didn't_  finish  _the equations, I need to do_  more  _today!_

_Then, he had the gall to bring up the video of the bomb again when I protested that he had taken them away before I was finished!_

_...I knew this was going to be a bad day._

 

_(Sometime after lunch)_

_STUPID IDIOT THAT DOESN'T KNOW THE WORD FAIR IF IT HIT HIM IN THE FACE! TRIP OVER YOUR SHOELACES AND BREAK YOUR NOSE!_

{Another black cloud with scribbles of 'not fair' written repeatedly}

 

_(After dinner)  
The STUPID GUY DID IT AGAIN. HE TOOK AWAY THE EQUATION I WAS WORKING ON WHEN I. WASN'T. DONE._

_This is the THIRD time this has happened! And when I asked about it, the stupid idiot didn't answer any of my questions, just totally ignoring me!_ _I'm only supposed to solve two per day, and he just -!_

_ARGHHHH!_

{Another huge black cloud covers the rest of the page, with intermittent words of 'stupid' 'idiot' 'leave me alone' 'why me' written repeatedly with enough force that it makes indents on the next page}

 _I've had ENOUGH. I can't do it anymore. He said two equations, and there's no way I'm doing another one. That was the third equation he took away today, meaning if I do this new one as well, it means that I would've done_  four  _equations, which is twice the amount I'm supposed to do._ _I'm not doing anymore today, and he can't make me, even... if he has a bomb._

{There is a small patch of paper that looks like it got wet and dried out again}

_...How long do I have to do this?_

_Today has seriously been a super bad day, starting from that dream early this morning. Every time I try to forget the dream, Tadashi's face... I can't help but remember_  that smile _. I can't stop thinking about it..._

_I need to get a message to Tadashi and Aunt Cass that I'm kidnapped and that I don't know where I am, but that I'm okay. Somehow._

_If I can't... Well, they'll be okay, because they know I'm alive._

_...Right?_

* * *

At the end of the day, Hiro blankly stared at the rows of tallies scratched onto the wall.

There were three groups of five tally marks, the last diagonal line marked out only that morning after breakfast.

 _Fifteen days since the fire,_  he mused, fingers trailing down each tally. A shiver ran down his back, and he hunched into himself, but didn't stop tracing with his fingers.  _It is very possible that Tadashi and Aunt Cass think that I'm dead, because Tadashi knew I was going into the building, and the whole place began to explode as I headed out._

 _Then..._  He paused when he came to the end of one group, then slid a finger towards the next group, thoughts miles and miles away.  _Then I got caught, but they didn't know where I was, so it's not like they knew about it._

 _Did my kidnapper tell them that I was alive?_ His finger jumped onto the last group.  _If he did, then they must be trying to find out where I am, or dealing with ransom stuff; that's why things are taking so long._

 _If he didn't..._  His fingers trailed the last tally, the one he had scratched out that morning with shaky hands, phantom faces of a grieving Tadashi still clear in his mind.

Hiro turned back to the desk and placed the pencil down next to the tray with the piece of chocolate cake, one that had come after dinner for the first time. Brooding about the reasons for the extra food, he sat down in front of the desk and opened the theory book, doodling a piece of cake on the margins of the page full of mathematical equations.

 _I suppose the kidnapper was feeling kind again,_  he thought as he picked up the paper spoon and began cutting the cake into pieces.  _Then again, I did leave most of the food alone all day. Maybe he's trying to entice me to eat so I don't keel over._

Thinking back to the meals that had come today, he realized that the food was more extravagant than usual. Breakfast had been the normal apple and buttered toast (he barely took a bite of the apple and left it alone), lunch some kind of huge sub sandwich (he picked at it, eating a little of the ham), and dinner a hamburger steak with mashed potatoes and gravy and peas (the dish had ended up all mashed into a mess of potatoes and peas).

 _Huh. The kidnapper might be getting worried for my health or something,_  Hiro thought, shaking his head in wonder.  _But I'm really not hungry._

He sighed gustily, leaving the tray with the cake (though now it wasn't cake anymore but mousse with bits and pieces of cake) next to the panel that let the food in and out.

In the end, all his attempts in keeping the panelling open had failed, as pouring the water didn't do anything to it, and propping it open was futile and only broke things. He had also tried to keep the utensils and tray in the room near the beginning of his imprisonment, but every time he did, a loud alarm would start to shrill and wouldn't stop until he returned everything to the door. The sudden noise was jarring and hadn't let him think at all, shocking him so badly that he flinched at every tiny sound for the next few hours.

Hiro sighed again as he lay down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling and absentmindedly kicking his legs.

 _Spicy chicken,_  he pondered, as he tried to come up with what he wanted to eat. _I miss Aunt Cass's chicken._

_Actually, I miss Aunt Cass and Tadashi more. Honey Lemon, GoGo, Fred, Wasabi... even Baymax, too. I miss them all._

"I just want to go home," he muttered, rolling over on the bed.

There was a crinkle of paper underneath him, and Hiro shifted to find the piece of paper he had sketched on a while ago - a little doodle with everyone smiling on it. He held it tightly in his hands, staring at the doodle and  _wishing_.

"I want to go home," he repeated, feeling more and more upset at the burn behind his eyelids that refused to fade away.

Without meaning to, his hands tightened on the piece of paper, crumpling the doodles of his family and friends - that small crumple made him inexplicably  _angry_ , and Hiro jumped off the bed, and yelled at the camera.

" _Why!_ " He shouted, throwing the balled-up sketch at the camera. Stomping to the desk, he began to rip some pages out of the theory books to throw more balled-up pieces of paper. "Why can't you just let me go, and get another genius? One that actually  _understands_  this stuff?"

All the paper balls fell woefully short of the camera and bounced off the walls to litter the too-clean floor.

"Why do you need  _me!_  I'm only fourteen, a bot - an ex-bot-fighter, and - and  _maybe_  a genius that graduated high school early, but there are tons of other people like me, no, tons of people  _smarter_  than me out there! I want to go  _home!_ "

There was no response from the holoboard, only silence permeating the small room as the blue-gray equation slowly spun in its never-ending rotation. It felt like talking to a wall, as if there was no one there at all.

Breathing hard, Hiro stomped back to the bed and crawled under the blanket, curling up with the lumpy pillow to hide his tears that were about to spill over.

"I want to go home," he murmured again into the pillow, feeling so, so tired of everything.

* * *

With a small clink, a coffee cup was placed gently down on a desktop covered with papers scribbled with complex notes.

The hand that had held the coffee cup grabbed a cellphone from the edge of the messy desk and fiddled with it to show a list of contacts.

The man who had been sitting in front of the desk swiftly went down the list and paused the screen at the 'S' section.

Biting a lip, he hesitantly hovered his thumb over the call button next to the name 'Smith'.

A few seconds of worrying his lip later, he pressed down, and a dialing tone rang in the silent lab, then connected.

"...Smith."


	5. First Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read chapter 5 of "Picture Me Without You" before reading this chapter.

**[16 days since the Fire]**

The boy had done it again. Hiro Hamada, the undoubted genius, had made yet another breakthrough in a few hours.

A steaming cup clunked down on the desk, a few stray drops of coffee dripping down the sides; the hand around the mug let go and quickly grabbed a pen and pad instead, jotting down a few things frantically.

The wonders of the mind, when not given any limitations – the boy had proven the ingenuity of the solutions such a mind could come up with.

To think that he had overlooked the boy even when he had first seen the raw potential, to think that he would have almost missed _this_ if he had –

Well. The important thing was that the boy was here now.

* * *

**[ _Memories_ ]**

He had seen the boy's potential for the first time as he had been returning from a meeting with the SFIT head engineer about his commission of the machinery that he couldn't make himself.

Busy with his armload of notes, he hadn't been looking up, reshuffling the numerous pages that had become mixed up while he had been trying to explain the necessary designs and functions on each piece of the machine. He had been so preoccupied with his thoughts that he hadn't noticed the rolling cart with a small person running close behind it, but he did look up in time to see the fast-approaching cart full of metallic objects and a flash of a young, horrified face –

The collision had been inescapable; he had braced himself for the crash, trying to turn away and protect himself. The cart had bumped harshly into his legs and spilled its metal parts with a loud crash, making him yelp in surprise and pain. He had dropped all his notes, scattering the loose-leaf all over the hallway as he tried to rub away the throbbing in his shins.

For a moment, he had watched the papers flying about and entertained the thought of giving up –

 _No! I can't lose them now, she's still waiting for me_ – _I can't give up yet –_

Quickly blinking away his tears of pain, he'd forcefully ignored the throbbing and began the painstaking work of collecting the scattered pages.

"I'm so sorry!" The person – a young boy – had apologized, rushing over to park the cart and helping to gather up the scattered pages as he came closer.

He'd given the boy a small huff of irritation and a frown, gruffly admonishing him. "Be careful. You shouldn't be driving the cart around that fast."

"I'm so, so, sorry. I was trying to guide it into the molding room, and I swear I only looked away for one second! Then the ramp was right _there_ and I tried to stop it, but the cart picked up momentum... and... you know the rest," the boy had said, a hand combing through his hair in distress. "...I'm sorry."

By then he had been barely paying attention, humming to show that he understood while mentally cursing himself for not clipping the sheaves of paper together.

Soon, most of the pages were back in some semblance of a pile, and he had paused in collecting his pages to try and shift them back into a neat stack, with no success. The kid had helped him collect the remaining scattered pages, picking them up quickly before they got trampled by passersby.

The boy had waited for him to finish, eyes flicking over the mathematical proofs on the few pages that he was holding on to.

(Only later did he see that it had been the coincidence of coincidences that he had found the boy's potential – if the cart had not crashed, if he had not picked the papers in chronological order, if the boy had not decided to _help_ , if the boy had _not_ taken the cursory look over that one equation – this was when he suspected someone up there was helping him out)

As he had taken back the pages from the boy, the little helper had made a comment that would change everything. "You sure about this part here?"

At first, he hadn't seen what the boy was pointing at, too busy trying to shift around the armload of papers, theory books, and mug of coffee back into his arms. He had distractedly muttered something about _please repeat that_ , not knowing that the boy would say something that would lead him to his first breakthrough in months.

"I've never seen this equation before in my life, but isn't this the Copenhagen variable?" There had been an innocent expression on the boy's face, head tilted in question. But before he had been able to express his surprise or give an affirmative answer, the boy had continued, pointing to one the equations on the page. "If you're sending a particle – this gamma particle, I'm guessing – wouldn't the frequency of this and this clash so that it neutralizes whatever effect you're trying to make?"

The earlier surprise from hearing the correct name for the arcane variable had faded and had been replaced by utter bewilderment; he had not expected that at all from a boy barely five feet tall.

"Well sir, not to be all obnoxious and try to be a know-it-all, but maybe change the frequency of one of these –" the boy had pointed to the luxen and tachyon particles – "to match whatever you're trying to get with this –" he'd tapped twice on the bradyon wave that caused the zeno effect – "weird variable. It might work better. Looks more even that way."

At the last statement, he had almost lost his grip on his armload of papers again. How in the world had he and Smith missed _that_? The way they'd written up the equation hadn't been _wrong_ , it had been the most stable equation! But there that boy had been, throwing out one of the leading theories by pointing out –

 _This boy... he just suggested something that I hadn't thought to be a problem, but the_ implications _behind changing those two..._ He had mused, stunned at the sheer enormity of the moment.

While he had been busy trying to wrap his head around the fact that the boy in front of him had almost singlehandedly pointed something out that could _prove the current working theory wrong_ , the boy had watched him with a cheeky grin, eyes filled with mirth. When he had struggled to form the words to respond, the boy had spoken again with a short laugh.

"Trying to catch flies?"

Before he had a chance close his gaping mouth and reply to _that_ , the boy had returned to his cart and began pushing it away, giving him a saucy two-fingered salute.

He had stood stock-still, staring back down at the pages that the boy had handed to him. His mind had whirled through all the possibilities that could occur from this change as his head had repeated everything the boy had said.

For a kid who had barely looked old enough to be in middle school to be able to even read his conclusion was in and of itself amazing, but for that same kid to point out a fundamental flaw that men with PhDs in quantum physics had overlooked?

Awe-inspiring.

But not only that – the boy had given him a possible solution that _could actually work_. What the child had said about putting the bradyon wave on the same frequency of the luxen would have fixed the problem, if it hadn't been for the inevitable clash with the psi particle. But if the frequency of the chedison wave was altered instead...

 _The boy is onto something,_ he'd thought. _With this one equation changed, the entire sequence of theorems could potentially change._

He had immediately gone to the nearest flat surface (the hallway wall) and had begun writing furiously on top of his meticulous notes, crossing out the now useless information. Frantically rewriting the section for the Copenhagen interpretation before he forgot, he had felt deliriously happy. He'd just _known_ that this moment was the very first step of many to come –

A laugh with a slight hysterical edge had made passing students give him curious looks, but he hadn't cared.

 _This... this is a breakthrough I_ hadn't _been looking for, but one that solves so many of the problems I've been having!_ Excitedly crossing out another equation, he'd hurriedly rewritten the skeletons of a new equation, deciding to work out the details later. _It would need a few more days, no, weeks of work, but... I'm finally getting somewhere, I can feel it!_

That moment of realization that _things were working out_ had been as bright as a light in a darkroom, as if he'd won the Nobel prize, as rapturous as if heaven opened up with a host of angels, as if – as if _she had_ _come back_.

{(000)}

There had been moments when he'd thought he could simply _take_ the boy right then (open garage door, no nearby security cameras or witnesses) but he'd always decided against it at the last minute. The boy going missing before the showcase would have definitely been more noticed, as the teen had almost always been surrounded by other people. The people around him had seemed to be lending a hand for the grunt-work to make the project on time for the showcase. He'd decided to approach the boy after the showcase, when it was far more likely to find him alone, especially since the boy liked to go to bot-fights.

From what he'd seen, the boy had the potential to soak up unbelievable amounts of information and apply it in creative and innovative ways; but that had not mean that Hiro Hamada was also talented in other subject matters. He had even heard a rumor that the boy was into robotics only because of his older brother's love for the topic.

 _A known genius in robotics because he has a talent of bringing different technologies and ideas together,_ he'd decided. _But does he have enough well-rounded knowledge to come up with something spontaneous?_

There had been no clear cut answer for that; but after a few moments of contemplation he had headed back, mentally listing even more contingencies for the contingencies he had placed in the room to prevent any... mishaps.

What revulsion he'd felt had been pushed down, justified with the _result_ he would get with the boy on his side.

 _It is worth it,_ he tried to persuade himself. _The boy will not be hurt in any way and he'll only go missing for a short few days. Also, teens run away from home quite often; it won't make that much of a difference._

Tricking the boy's family had left a sour taste in his mouth, but it couldn't have been helped.

_Even if the authorities gets word of my less-than-legal machinations, I'm not planning on being around to face the repercussions, anyway._

{(000)}

On the day of the showcase, he'd watched carefully as the boy genius had given his presentation of his invention – indeed, the countless possible applications! Again, the ingenuity of the boy to develop something from an already invented technology had been quite amazing.

Lost in thought, he'd fingered the small bottle of chloroform in his pocket. Everything had been in place; he'd made plans on how to communicate with the boy without actual contact, on how to provide and deliver sustenance, and on other containment methods, just in case. The only thing left had been to get Hiro Hamada alone and... convince him.

He'd felt a stab of worry – _what if he finds a way out?_

Most of his time had been spent on figuring out the equations instead of looking for ways to 'seal' the room shut. His first priority had been to solve the equations, not to kidnap the boy, after all. He'd really had no intention of keeping the boy too long – the repugnance of his own planning had already plagued him with sleepless nights.

_If only there was a way to keep him from finding a way... Perhaps I should use something to inhibit his logic, to keep him more docile. Small daily doses of CV4?_

He had taken a moment to weigh the options, then had shaken away the idea of daily doses. _I want the boy to be thinking clearly. Maybe a very diluted dose once in a while, but not daily. And it's a plan B._

As he'd continued to muse over when the situation would call for using the drug, he'd become more and more disgusted with himself.

"This is something she definitely wouldn't approve of," he muttered. _She'd be horrified that I even entertained the idea of_ kidnapping _in the first place._

But each time doubt had consumed his thoughts, he'd quashed it down forcefully with the argument that silenced all –

 _It's for_ _her._ Everything _and_ anything _is worth getting her back._

* * *

**[Day 0]**

The chaos that had resulted from the fire was like a heaven-sent gift; it had almost been as if someone up there had given him approval for his plans, telling him to hurry and save her –

It had begun as a small fire, of manageable sizes. Everyone had heard the fire alarm and cleared the building in a timely fashion, gathering in front of the building and murmuring worriedly as the fire became bigger.

While he had kept an eye on the fire, he had all but given up on the second part of his plan for later when Hiro Hamada had raced past him, eyes clear with a single-minded intensity.

The older Hamada had been nowhere to be seen – the boy had been alone.

He had not expected to find an opportunity to implement his plans so soon. He'd lost the Hamadas in the crowd in the exhibition hall, focused too much on tamping down his urge to pick a fight with that no-good, money-grabbing corporate shark.

Seeing the boy up ahead next to the stage, he'd hidden his face as he'd ducked out of sight behind one of the pillars and prepared the chloroform, keeping half-an-eye on the boy. He had seen the boy pick something up – the neurocranial transmitter – and start making his way back towards the fire exit he had come in through.

 _It's now or looking for another opportunity later, with a higher possibility of having witnesses around,_ he'd thought, urging his more reluctant side to give in.

At the explosions of some flammable projects, the boy had turned back towards the fire, glancing hesitantly between the encroaching fire and the transmitter in his hand.

That had been his chance, and it had been so perfect.

He'd slowly begun circling around the boy, careful not to be noticed –

_Now._

He'd grabbed the boy quite easily, and had waited barely half a minute before all the twitching had ceased. The boy had struggled valiantly, but it had been almost laughable how he'd fit the stereotypical 'genius' label to a T – it usually took at least a minute for the chemical to take hold enough for someone to pass out.

Shifting the unresponsive boy into a fireman's carry, he'd glanced at the fire that was creeping towards another project a short distance away.

 _A fire is just as great at destroying evidence,_ he'd decided, throwing the near-empty bottle of chloroform and cloth into the fire. At the tinkle of a glass jar breaking, he'd nodded to himself, satisfied.

He'd been pushing the fire exit open when he'd heard a distant shout.

"Hiro! Hiro, where are you?! _Get out of there right now!_ "

Glancing back into the exhibition hall now full of uncontrollable flames, he'd ignored the twinge of guilt.

 _I will let the boy go,_ he'd mentally promised the desperate older Hamada. _Just not yet._

There had been a bitter aftertaste in his mouth as he'd turned his back to the burning building.

 _At least he will see the boy again,_ he'd thought darkly. _Things aren't ever fair; after all my efforts, I still might never see_ _her_ _again._

* * *

**[15 days since the fire]**

He flinched awake from his light doze as the screen in front of him flickered.

Grabbing his cold cup of coffee, he finished the cup to its bitter dregs with a wince, still bleary-eyed from the unplanned nap.

He glanced at the clock – it read 2:07 AM in blinking letters – before looking back at the screen.

The boy was sitting up in bed, breathing harshly. As he watched, Hiro rolled away to face the wall and curled up in his blankets. The boy had not been sleeping well these past few days, and looked a lot thinner than before. And he hadn't been fat before, either.

A stab of concern filled him. _Have I been feeding him properly? I did provide him with nutritious meals..._

Perhaps it had been too much pressure to expect the boy to learn concepts in several days that took normal people several years to learn?

It was time he let the boy go; he had planned on a couple of days, not two weeks. But it really had been perfect – the boy's family thought him dead and no one was actively looking for the boy, allowing him a lot more time for the teen to look over his calculations.

And what help the boy had given, once provided with the right motivation. It had been challenging to create a believable video that suggested that a bomb was below the boy's house, but quite doable; the boy had believed him right away – all according to plan.

Only the first day had not gone to plan – the boy, after waking up, had gone into what looked like a debilitating panic attack. He'd immediately injected nitrogen gas into the room (it had paid to have prepared this extensively) but the dose specified had knocked the boy unconscious again. Nitrogen gas was never meant to be a sedative, and became quite dangerous if used incorrectly; he'd all but ran to the room in a panic –

Thankfully, the boy had woken after a day and a half of sleep, during which he changed almost all his plans _again_.

 _A wild card both awake and asleep_ , he thought with reluctant admiration. _All my research seems to be affected in a similar fashion, clicking into place easily and logically._

He watched the boy a little longer, then decided to get his own rest.

As he reorganized everything, he reflected on what to do next. The boy had been stuck with him for too long; he knew it wasn't good for someone to be so isolated, especially at such an impressionable age. It was time he let the boy go.

 _Tomorrow, I'll start picking up the pace,_ he thought. _Better to make use of the sharp mind while he was still here._

* * *

**[16 days since the fire]**

Unbelievable.

He had given the boy the equation, the one that needed advanced knowledge in quantum metaphysics and one that caused more than half his migraines, _on a whim_ , but the boy had just – just –

The surveillance video showed the teen lying back on the bed facing the ceiling, his legs bouncing against the edge of the bed; he was moodily doodling in one of the theory books, uncaring that he was defacing the book. Just a few moments ago the boy had finished scribbling something furiously into the notebook (probably a journal entry – his body language was quite easy to read), then stared up at the ceiling, eyes glazed as he saw something that only he could see.

 _This boy is wasted in the field of robotics,_ he thought disdainfully. _At the rate he is working, my lifetime's worth of research would be complete if he stayed a few more days. If he just applied himself, the boy could come up with several different theories that would leave the currently leading physicists in the dust – quite possibly to be hailed as the next coming of Einstein._

He had to call Smith. Smith was the head programmer for their project, Project 25JCI, and things would go a lot faster if he was brought up to date about the new formulas and equations; he would also know what to do with the boy.

Smith always knew what to do – the problem was, he was ashamed to show his long-time co-worker the methods he had used to get this far.

{(000)}

 _"Why do you need me?! I'm only fourteen, a bot_ – _an ex-bot-fighter, and_ – _and maybe a genius that graduated high school early, but there are tons of other people like me, no, tons of people smarter than me out there! I want to go home!"_

He silently watched the boy rage at the camera, then placed his coffee cup gently down on the desk covered with pages and pages of his notes with the latest equation.

His hand strayed towards the cellphone abandoned at the corner of the desk. The device had hundreds of notifications, texts, and missed calls that he had ignored for the past few weeks, but he disregarded them all, going straight to the list of contacts.

Swiftly going down the short list of contacts, he paused the screen at the 'S' section and hovered his thumb over the call button next to the name 'Smith'.

 _He definitely wouldn't approve,_ he thought, glancing at the surveillance video. _Just as she wouldn't have approved. But he would understand_ _–_ _he must understand – that this was the only way._

A few seconds of worrying his lip later, he pressed down, and a dialing tone rang in the silent lab, then connected.

"...Smith."

" _Ah, look who called! Finally decided to come out of your cave, have you? I've called you so many times, I actually memorized your phone number, and you know how bad my memories are –_ "

"Smith –"

" _– There's bad news. Krei has succeeded in recreating our project, with_ another _accident –_ "

"Smith, _please_." He pleaded, and true to the many years of friendship shared between them, Smith quickly picked up his mood and became serious.

" _...What's going on? Is something wrong?_ "

"Well..."

 _How did you explain something like this?_ he wondered. _There is no simple way to tell him that I am so very close to finding her, that I was about to get her back_ –

"Smith, I need you. Here." He paused, hearing the sharp intake of breath on the other side. "...Could you please come?"

He waited with bated breath, just hoping –

There was a sigh on the other side, then the baritone voice spoke again. " _...Alright, where's 'here'?_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make sure you are paying attention to the dates! You'll start seeing a lot of tie-ins and symbols in each twinfic... kudos to those who can identify it. ;)


	6. Trust Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read chapter 6 of 'Picture Me Without You' before reading this chapter.

**[ _Memories_ ]**

_A month passes after meeting the boy with the cart, and the small hint given is working out quite well into a well-founded theory. There are rarely any snags in the theory, and what snags exists are easily dealt with after a couple more days of fiddling._

_The problems he has now are the equations that specifies where, when and what dimension is the one he wants; this is the most delicate and complex part of his work, as this needs theoretical equations that had never undergone testing before_ — _all deemed 'untestable'._

_He tries to create equations again and again, trying it in inverse, using hyperbolic trigonometry, differential metrics, everything he knows, but he cannot find a way to overcome the dilation that prevents him from recreating the exact tachyon effect that would open the 'door' to the dimension he wants._

_Several weeks of constant failure later, he decides to search out the genius boy who handed him the miraculous inspiration._

_After asking around, he finds that the boy's name is Hiro Hamada. All inquiries as to where he could be contacted is immediately pointed to a Tadashi Hamada, apparently his older brother who has a lab space in the seniors' SFIT advanced robotics section._

_The almost thirty-year-old professor (one of the youngest, though he didn't break any records) heads directly to the student in question, confident that the miracle boy will help him make another breakthrough, or if not, at least provide a fresh point of view unfettered by the stigmas of theories (and he is one step closer to bringing her back)_ —

_He knocks and enters the large lab space, looking around, vaguely impressed with the work in progress. But there are no name plates or signs that let him know who was who. The nearest student, a girl with short, frizzly brown hair comes up to him smiling and asks, "Hi, can I help you?"_

_"Yes, I'm looking for a Hiro Hamada, brother to a Tadashi Hamada. I understand that Tadashi Hamada has a working space here?" He replies, a small frown marring his face._

_At the name_ Hiro _, the girl's face turns wary, her smile a bit forced. "Oh, I see. Well, you've come to the right place. Tadashi's in that corner over there next to the window. Knock on his partition to catch his attention." She turns and walks away without waiting for a response._

_He frowns deeply at her reaction to the name of the miracle boy, but decides it is not that important and steps in the direction she pointed him to._

_He finds a young man with his cap on backwards in the corner cubicle, hunched over a computer screen, hurriedly typing away at a complex looking code with one hand as he packs away things on the desk into a nearby satchel. At his knock, the young adult looks up._

_"Are you Tadashi Hamada?"_

_"Yes? How can I help you?"_

_"Where can I find your brother, Hiro Hamada?"_

_A slight frown etches itself between the young adult's brows. "Hiro? Why do you want to know?"_

_"I have a question I would like to ask him."_

_"Oh?" The college student raises an eyebrow, continuing to pack away his notebooks and microchips at a much slower pace, waiting for an elaboration._

_With a sigh, he obliges. He supposes that all older siblings are protective over their younger siblings, and he had expected that he would answer some questions before actually meeting the miracle boy once again. He decides to go with the simple explanation, as the young adult in front of him seems to be in a hurry._

_"A few months ago your brother helped me get a breakthrough; he said a few words that have pointed me in a direction I haven't gone before, and I wish to see if it was... possible to recreate it. I have something here that I'd hoped he would look over."_

_Surprisingly, the older Hamada stops all movement and turns to him with a disapproving expression on his face. He raises an eyebrow in return, not exactly sure what is going on._

_"I'm sorry sir, Hiro's busy making his project for the SFIT showcase next week. He is not interested in looking over other people's work."_

_The young man replies as he turns back and finishes packing away his satchel, picking up his keys and walking towards the cubicle entrance, forcing him to take several unconscious steps backwards to get out of the way._

_"It will only take a tiny amount of his time –"_

_The older Hamada stops abruptly and gives him a polite-sort-of-glare, and crosses his arms._

_"Look. Hiro doesn't_ have _to look at anything or give his input. He_ could _, but afterwards, there is no guarantee that you won't take full credit for all his work and time," the young man says as he taps on the glass of his cubicle walls, making them opaque. "It's happened before, someone publishing Hiro's work as theirs; and I'm not willing to chance it another time and hurt my brother again. So, I'm going to ask - no, I'm going to_ tell _you,_ sir _, to leave my brother alone."_

_Surprised, he gaped, not believing what he is hearing. Publishing the boy's work and efforts as theirs?_

_"But –" Still shocked at the outright denial for what he thought was an innocuous favor, he tries to explain that his project is_ important _as it is_ personal _, and that there is no risk whatsoever of him doing the same_ _, but he is cut off quite rudely._

_"Hiro has already had plenty of offers for him to work with other professors' projects, but only a very, very select few had actually ended up giving Hiro any credit," the older Hamada says as he finishes locking up his cubicle. Everyone in earshot can practically hear the 'I doubt you will' in the young adult's disdaining voice. "And I am late to where I'm supposed to be. Have a good day."_

_Tadashi Hamada walks away, leaving a sputtering Vincent Kruger behind.  
_

* * *

**[17 days since the fire]**

Vincent Kruger paced back and forth restlessly, glancing at his unresponsive phone every other minute.

_Perhaps it was a mistake to call Smith here,_ he thought. _Would he understand?_

Quite honestly, it didn't need to be said that the boy had been kidnapped — if he hid the video feed and was vague about how he came to find the ground-breaking equations...

_But Smith had always been very honest with me, never withholding a truth, no matter how much it hurt to hear. Didn't Smith deserve the same?_

He really did not want to disappoint Smith. Smith had known him through both thick and thin, and there was almost nothing he could hide from the man. What 'quirks' (as Smith teasingly called it) he had, the older man blamed the welfare system, as it was well-meaning and did place most children in good homes, but unfortunately did very little to prevent criminal influences that existed near group-homes and some dilapidated orphanages.

Smith always became fired up whenever the topic came up (he had taken part in protests to raise awareness for the country's lacking welfare system), bringing up statistical information claiming that a considerably large percentage of the children in group-homes and orphanages never got the opportunity nor the people willing to take them in, and that of these unfortunates, at least half would go to the streets or experience juvenile detention as a rule.

And Smith was right. What he didn't know (or perhaps he did, and was just being optimistic) was that most of those children will break from their experiences in detention and never become 'functional adults'. Only a small group would claw their way out and become exceptionally 'successful' people (as the world defined it); the remaining unfortunates who were changed from their experiences but weren't _good enough_ would stay broken and barely functioning in the civilian world, with only a tattered future to look forward to.

He was of the latter (until Smith breathed new purpose into him).

His very first group-home had been near some kind of gang that had recruited many 'talented' kids with a bit of extra pocket money, which became essential when the group-home supervisor was constantly cutting costs to a minimum so he could indulge in gambling. In hindsight, the man may have even owed some debts to the gang, which would have explained the very lax (if there had been any in the first place) rules around the group-home involving the gangs that lived close by.

By the age of nine he had lived and breathed street talk and had been one of the more talented of his age group, though he remained more aloof and serious, more ...sophisticated in his execution of various criminal acts compared to his peers. He knew hundreds of ways to make another person wary of him, even if he hadn't been the biggest or strongest kid around — he had cultured his rising reputation further so they all stayed away. Their unofficial 'trainer' to groom them into future gang members had jokingly predicted of a 'new empire in the black market under Kruger's unflinching leadership' and that he 'looked forward to working under you'.

But one day the government had finally noticed the discrepancy of the funds and actual living standards in their group-home, and immediately arrested their supervisor, Mr. Henry. Their home had been broken apart and all the children (he had not been a child anymore, but they _insisted_ that he was) were scattered far, far away from the gang's influences, spread across the country in different group-homes and orphanages.

The next few years he had drifted from home to home, always staying aloof and away from his 'peers' and whatever foster family he had been stuck with. Every move, he had known he could not connect to them in their harshly lit-up world where shadows had no place to be — and he only had shadows to offer, what little shreds of light overlooked for his intimidating darkness.

_It was a lonely experience,_ he thought as he swept a hand across his brows. _But it drove me to develop the skill set that others later admired_.

His drive for recognition had sent him after every local gang to get into their ranks after each and every move to a new home. At first, his young age had earned him scorn from the gangs and pity and disappointment from his foster parents (whichever one it was at the time), but as time passed, he had always proved to all of them that he _belonged_ (the gangs) and that _no one controlled him_ (foster parents) and that he was _stronger_ (everyone who picked a fight).

Then, right before he was old enough to finally let free from the system once and for all, he had met Smith.

The first time Kruger had met Smith was when Smith was an honors graduate student and he a socially inept punk. They had met through the Big Brother program, where Smith had been one of the senior members with a lot of experience under his belt while he himself, Vincent Conrad Kruger, had been a recently-moved delinquent foster kid that did not want to be anywhere near anything resembling authority.

Their first meeting had been spent mostly in silence, Smith simply sitting sipping his his cappuccino frappé with a serenity that only came from years and years of talking and providing amateur counseling for troubled teenagers. Kruger had fidgeted in his seat mutinously glaring at the café tabletop, determined not to initiate the conversation.

After almost an hour of silence, Smith had spoken first, talking about what and where he studied. He then had taken out his textbook from his bag and began flipping through the pages ( _Atom and Optical Physics_ by Ron Parker), pausing at each colorful picture and explaining the basics of physics and why it was so "insanely cool that it was a life-long mission to study it'. At the time, Kruger had not verbally admitted to being fascinated by the concepts that explained the whys of everything and anything of the universe (or so Smith claimed), but he could not deny that the dreamy look in Smith's eyes when he spoke about 'dimension travel' and 'teleportation' had intrigued him.

That afternoon, he had _borrowed_ a physics book from the library and found Smith's words to be true, and more. It had been the beginning of a calling.

From that point on, the Big Brother meetings became much more interesting. He would suggest a hypothetical situation where physics could not be applied, and Smith would come up with a counter-argument that proved that it could; he would research the theorems and laws that Smith would mention later on in the library, reading up on mathematical formulas that he didn't know about. Each meeting was a battle of wits, where Smith would win if he could explain and he would win if Smith could not.

With every meeting, Smith had slowly changed Vincent's barely-there morals from the near black into a dark gray; years later, he admitted that Vincent's justification of various illegal activities had been alarming, and had done his best to raise his awareness of what was proper.

Smith... he had seen not only his imperfections, but also his shreds of light. He never judged his darkness — if he did judge, he heard out the reasons before verbally reaming a new one into him for his methods, but never for the reasons (especially not for truly justifiable reasons).

By the time his high school senior year approached, Smith had long stopped being his assigned Big Brother, but they still held their debates and discussions at least once a month, often more — their relationship had evolved into an unlikely friendship that would survive over the years.

He had graduated with such a great talent for Relativistic Physics and Analytical Mathematics (he had taken several _accelerated_ accelerated college-level classes) that several prestigious engineering colleges had requested for him to attend. Smith had been really pleased that his own college had made him a similar offer, and Kruger had chosen SFIT because of it.

Less than three years later (he became known as a genius for graduating college and receiving a PhD in less than six, with many shocked that anyone could get a PhD in their early twenties), he found himself working at first under Smith's team, then for Smith, then as his partner on projects they had only dreamed of doing in their quantum mechanical theory debates that happened just about every time they met. And, while bringing their fantasy into reality, Smith had become a brother, a very close friend, a mentor for the boy who had no moral compass.

An epiphany blindsided him in his ruminations of the past. He stopped walking, mouth falling slack. _Had I truly been that unaware...?_

_He's the father I've never had,_ he thought, shocked that he only realized now. _He knows more about me than I do of myself, and I know more about him than I do of my biological father. He was there when I lost Monique —_

Abruptly, all his thought processes stopped at her name. _Monique._

She had come bursting into his life like a shooting star, immediately becoming his best friend, his light, his steadfast Northern Star. She and Smith had worked tirelessly to curb away his less than legal reactions to everything, edging their way steadily into his heart — they redefined what it meant to be 'respected', to be 'admired', to be _'loved'_ —

The shrill sound of his phone ringing ripped through his musings, cutting them short before he could brood further. Disoriented by the sound, Kruger held still for a few seconds before fumblingly picking up the phone and answering the call.

"Hello?"

"Vince, I'm here. Why are you here in this... _dump_ and not in your apartment?"

Kruger let out a shaky sigh. "...Smith."

"Yes, yes, that's my name. Where are you?"

"Do you see the building with the red door? Just come up and open the door."

Kruger had been about to end the call, when Smith's hesitant voice came through.

"...Vincent, you're not doing anything... illegal, are you?"

_Sharp as always,_ he thought as he immediately answered in the negative. _Smith is already calling me 'Vincent' instead of 'Vince'._

_I must be more out of touch than I thought,_ he mused, both relieved and dismayed. _Better get my act together before he really notices._

He couldn't disappoint his one father figure. No, not after so long of 'behaving'. Let him see that he was now a good person, that all the darkness from before was still buried deep and did not plan on showing up anytime soon.

{(000)}

"By Faraday, Coulomb, _and_ Dalton!" Smith exclaimed, excitedly flipping the page over to continue reading. "Vince!"

_He actually managed to pull it off — I thought it would need more than another year of tinkering!_ Smith thought, watching from the corner of his eye how Kruger was unable to keep the smile of pride away as he received recognition. Something else flickered in his eyes, but the older man wasn't paying attention anymore, exuberant at the new discovery.

He continued to gush, eyes bright with pride. "Why ever in the world did you decide to keep this for yourself? This is brilliant!" he enthused, missing Vince's smile falling away into a blank mask. "You might even get a chance at the Nobel, if this can be confirmed by the committee!"

There was a long pause, in which Smith looked up from his celebrating to find his protégé half-turned away, expression barely visible.

"I didn't want to submit it for testing."

Smith's smile faltered at those quiet words, and his excitement fell away. _Don't tell me..._

He replaced the sheaves of paper on the desk and slowly approached his almost-son and reached out for his shoulder, trying to gently broach the subject.

"Vince, I know that it seems like you've made progress —"

The taller, younger man interrupted, a glint of anger in his eyes. "No, Smith, I've _made_ progress. It's now not a possibility, but something that can mostly be proven!"

Smith tried to calm the younger man down, both hands in a placating gesture. "Vincent, you have to realize that she is go —"

" _She's not gone!_ " Kruger's yell stopped all movement in the tension-filled room. In a much more smaller, broken voice, Kruger whispered, "...she's not gone."

_Einstein guide me,_ Smith thought as his heart went out to the young man he watched grow up. _He hasn't gotten over her yet._

As he struggled to come up with a way to make his protégé and friend realize the futility of his efforts, Kruger spoke again, thrusting more pages into his hands.

"Smith, I swear that this is it. I've found — just — just _look_ at the calculations."

Smith wordlessly took the papers, glancing at Kruger warily. There was a maniac glint in Vince's eyes that he had not seen in a long while.

"See here, do you see?" Kruger insisted, pointing to one equation in particular. "There's still a chance!"

_No there isn't,_ Smith thought sadly. _Even if there was a chance, we have no means of getting there._

"And I'm half-way to finding a way to get there!" Kruger asserted as he rummaged through his notes again. Smith silently watched as he grabbed a holo-pad, infinitesimally pausing before handing it over.

The middle-aged scientist took the pad to appease the agitated man, not expecting much; but when he scrolled down about a third of the page down, he did a double take, eyes flashing at his younger friend in disbelief.

"Vince, where did — _how_ did you come up with this angle?"

"An... inspiration."

When Kruger did not elaborate, he felt an inexplicable uneasiness. "Inspiration?"

"Yes."

An eyebrow raised in question, but Kruger remained silent. With many misgivings, Smith decided to let him be.

"...Alright, Vince. I trust that you'll tell me if it's important." Smith gently admonished as he continued to scroll down the holo-pad, marveling at the calculations. "And you are right, this could work... By the way, whose is this handwriting? I know you prefer to write on paper."

"... A boy."

Perplexed at the answer, Smith was sidelined from his examination of the equations to see Kruger looking conflicted, his shame and guilt warring with unabashed resolve.

"A _boy_?"

Kruger did not clarify, and Smith's sense of disquiet flared. He placed the pad down on the desk and slowly approached the younger man.

"Vince?" he asked, placing a hand on his shoulder again. "Is there something you wanted to tell me?"

Kruger hesitated, looking away from Smith's searching gaze. After a few moments of heavy silence, Kruger wordlessly went to the idling computer on the desk and pulled open a video feed of a room.

Smith peered at the video, vaguely seeing a figure on the bed. His mind faltered when it processed the image. _A boy? In a room that looked like a cell?_

Another wave of dread came over him as he turned to Kruger, not believing that what he was seeing was what he thought was going on.

_He couldn't possibly be saying what I think he is, could he?_

Kruger steadily looked more and more guilty (yet all the more firm with some kind of _intention_ ) and his lack of protest sent him reeling from some of the conclusions he came up with.

_Inspiration? The boy was an inspiration? ...You can't possibly have held the boy against his will?_

Kruger flinched, and Smith realized that he had unintentionally spoken the last question aloud.

His horrified whisper echoed loudly in the ensuing silence.

" _Vincent, what have you done?_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's short and has no Hiro. But it's a necessary chapter. Next chapter will be posted very soon~ (In less than a month.)
> 
> Oh, by the way, start paying attention to the dates on both Twin-fics! They're going to get increasingly more important! But to help you out, here's a mini version of the timeline for Hiro.
> 
> Day 0 - Fire
> 
> Day 1 - Hiro's Panic Attack
> 
> Day 2 - Taking Inventory
> 
> Day 6 - Receives a blank notebook (Hiro thinks it's Day 5)
> 
> Day 15 - Nightmares
> 
> Day 16 - Chapter 5: First Encounter (Kruger POV)
> 
> Day 18 - Smith


	7. When Wishes Come True

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiro meets Smith.

**[19 days since the fire]**

Hiro had been quietly trying to figure out the newest equation on the holoboard when he heard a loud thump from the door.

It was the first time he had heard a sound from the door besides the whirring of the electrical paneling as it let his food in and out. Half-fearful of what was about to happen, Hiro stopped everything and observed.

There were faint murmurs of angry mutterings, and a few tense seconds later, the door opened with an anticlimactic whir to show a man, one that was red-faced with exertion, huffing and puffing hard against the doorway as he leaned heavily against the wall to catch his breath.

The man was portly, dressed neatly in a sweater-vest over a button-up shirt and dark pants, the picture of a typical professor with the glasses and slightly receding gray-ish hair.

Hiro stood still and watched. Why the kidnapper would approach him now of all times, he had no idea, but _something_ had changed and it was very important —

Perhaps he was finally allowed to go back home. Perhaps he had made a mistake because of some lack in his knowledge. ...Perhaps he had outlived his usefulness.

A shiver went down his back.

By this time, the middle-aged man had entered the room, walking towards him. The man's already-flushed face was growing more flushed as their eyes met, and his eyebrows were crinkled in a frown and eyes turned stormy with anger.

Hiro slowly backed away to get as far away from the angry man, afraid of what was to come.

_I must have made a mistake,_ he thought. _And it was a mistake I wasn't allowed to make, putting aside all unfairness of my situation... I just hope nothing bad happens..._

Surprisingly, the other man paused and stepped back at his half-defiant and half-fearful gaze, and the anger ebbed away from his face, rearranging itself into a reassuring smile.

"Hey there."

_Huh?_ Hiro was confused — the man was angry at him before, and now, just... wasn't. _What's going on?_ With a touch of hysteria, Hiro wondered if the man was lulling him into a false sense of security.

Gesturing with two hands open to show he meant no harm, the portly man spoke soothingly, as if to a skittish animal.

"I'm really, really sorry about this."

Hiro began to protest at the tone of voice, that he was _not a skittish animal, I am very calm right now_ — but was interrupted by the man's concerned question.

"Are you okay?"

His train of thought derailed by the stupid question — because _obviously_ , being kidnapped for days and days with no escape in sight meant that he was _not_ 'okay' — Hiro opened his mouth to rant, both at the man's tone and question, only to ask the one question on his mind.

"...Who are you?"

The man's gaze softened even more, and he slowly extended his hand out to the teen.

"My name is Smith. Let's get you out of here."

"…Really?"

Hiro couldn't believe his ears. All this time of looking for a way to escape, and one day, this random person comes along and rescues him? _Was this another of my hallucinations? Am I wishing for escape so much that I am dreaming up a rescue that's happening right now? Wasn't this guy the kidnapper?_

"Really." The man answered as he nodded quite seriously, looking slightly pained by something.

The man — Smith — opened his mouth to say something else, when something seemed to occur to him. He squinted, then tilted his head from one side to another, looking at him from head to toe critically.

"...You don't happen to know someone called Tadashi, do you?"

"...Maybe."

Hiro saw a flicker of understanding in Smith's eyes that changed to one of contemplation, but the man didn't press and let it go, eyes glancing around the room.

The teen watched impassively as Smith looked around the room slowly, taking in the desk full of textbooks, holo-board with the equation spinning around, and the messed up bed. When Smith saw the tally marks on the wall next to the bed, his eyes became stormy again; the man broke the silence, pointing at the marks on the wall.

"Is this...?"

"...eighteen days." Hiro softly answered the unasked question. As he admitted the number of days, he felt washed out, and really, he didn't care whether this was a hallucination anymore.

_I just want_ — _I want_ —

Shaking off the mounting despair, Hiro steadily gazed back at Smith. "At least, as far as I know." he tacked on, eyes flickering to the wall with the tally marks. He looked back at the chunky, middle-aged man when he heard the mutter of curses, wondering what would happen next. He ruthlessly squashed down what hope he felt.

An awkward silence filled the air until Smith cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I'll get you home, kid. Come on."

Smith led the way to the door, looking back when Hiro didn't move, just staring at Smith and the open door.

_Home?_ a small voice whispered hopefully. _I'm really going home? It's really happening?_

"...Kid?"

Hiro looked sharply up at Smith and retorted, "My name is _Hiro_ , not 'kid'," He walked to the doorway, but stopped at the threshold, looking down both sides of the hallways suspiciously. "Or 'boy'."

As Hiro carefully stepped out into the hallway, Smith suddenly muttered another string of curses, running a hand through his salt and pepper hair.

"...You're _Hiro Hamada?!_ "

Hiro nodded, surprised at the vehemence of Smith's outrage.

"The SFIT Showcase. You — you were in the fire."

_I guess that proves he's not the kidnapper_ , he thought as he answered in a subdued voice. "Some guy kidnapped me while I was trying to save my project."

"But — from the _fire_? _What is that man thinking?!_ "

"...You know who it is?"

Smith paused, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"Yes. Vince — he's... he's someone I've known for a long, long time." Smith looked troubled, muttering something about 'really overstepped his bounds this time', to which Hiro snorted in agreement.

At the snort, Smith puffed up a little — _like a pufferfish_ , Hiro thought absentmindedly — and became slightly defensive for this 'Vince'.

"Kid — I mean, Hiro. Vincent... He's — he's had a difficult childhood, and he doesn't really know how to go about things... _legally_ , so to speak." Smith said as he ushered Hiro down the hallway to another door that led to a stairway, then leading the way down the steps. "I doubt he was in his right mind when he kidnapped you... He's faced a horrid loss recently. I apologize for him."

Hiro said nothing, simply following the man down the steps and into another hallway. This didn't look like anything he'd seen before, and there was too much detail for a dream to recreate; a blink kept down his tears of relief. He wasn't out yet, though he could practically smell his freedom — he was finally, _finally_ , going _home_.

They were approaching a red door, Smith saying something about working with this Vince person on a project together and something about transportation, Hiro wasn't paying much attention outside of the _door that led outside_ —

Smith kept up a steady commentary on said project — Project 25JCI — as he jiggled the doorknob, mentioning that the door was _hard to open before, too, so why don't you step back a little_ with a small smile on his face.

So he stepped back and looked on as Smith shifted the door in its frame, this way and that —

And jumped when someone's arms came around him from behind.

Before he could make a sound or look back to see who it was, something pinched him in the arm, making him take in a breath in pain and a _familiar sweet smell was there again_.

His body felt paralyzed, not responding to any of his mental commands to move ( _just like before, it was happening again, freedomissocloseNO_ ) —

Head reeling, his face on fire where the cloth touched, and everything a blur of colors, he felt himself lowered onto the ground, slumped against a wall. Forcing his eyes to blink and clear the blurred images, Hiro saw a white shape approaching the blob that was Smith from behind. Smith was unaware, and from the indistinguishable baritone that buzzed in his ears, was still keeping up the soft commentary and entirely focused on opening the door. Hiro tried to make a sound, he really did; all he managed was a soft groan — _blink_ —

The baritone hum cut off abruptly, and he saw a blurred scene of a man in a lab coat slowly lowering Smith to the ground, holding a cloth over Smith's face — _blink_ —

The man in the lab coat was approaching him, rummaging through a pocket. Hiro felt his fingers and toes slowly tingle back into existence, body slowly losing its numbness. He begged his body to _start moving, please_ — _blink_ —

A cold touch followed by a sting of pain jerked Hiro's eyes open, just in time to see steel-gray eyes under defined eyebrows — eyes flickered down to see a syringe move away from his neck — an expanse of white with a stitched name, 'V. Kruger' —

The world was quickly fading away to black, and his last thought was —

_I knew it was too good to be true._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More 'Hiro whumpage' for all you sadistic readers out there. (And the author is not sadistic at all for making this a super-short, full of only Hiro-pain and no-Tadashi-in-sight after almost a month's wait. Not sadistic at all.)
> 
> As you've probably noticed, songdreamer didn't update a chapter, and that's because:  
> We have decided to stop posting our chapters together, after much, much discussion. You see, songdreamer is really, really, reallllly going to suffer the next few months IRL (and I don't blame her if she stops writing for fun in the next 6 months or so) because she's in for a really busy school year. But she has given me her blessing to continue Cosmic Intervention to its conclusion ahead of her. Here's to hoping she catches up before CI's conclusion.
> 
> We apologize for letting you guys down for breaking our plan of posting at the same time. (Well, songdreamer more than me.) But as compensation, it means CI will be finished that much more faster. I've actually finished writing the next few chapters while waiting around :D
> 
> Hope y'all will keep an eye on PMWY, though, as you continue reading Cosmic Intervention. ;)


	8. Interlude - Project 25JCI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who is this 'Monique'?

**[ _Memories_ ]**

The two men stared at the block letters on the page and the strawberry-blond woman looking expectantly back at them.

Smith was the one to break the silence first. "Project 25JCI, huh?"

"Yes, don't you get it?" the woman said, capping her pen.

Both Smith and Vince shared a look, then shook their heads.

"I still think we should just call it the 'teleporter project' and be done with it." Smith grumbled. "We don't have to come up with a new name."

"But think of all the possibilities! A new name!" The woman enthused as she twirled her hands together, gesturing with the pen. "It'd be like giving the project a new personality!"

"Smith, I already explained, and you know better than to call it paranoia when they're really out to steal our ideas." Vince said as he looked down at the page again, trying to figure out what the string of letters stood for.

"Yes, Smith. I think that Vince is right. Not to mention that making new names is _fun_." The woman said as she twirled her pen like a baton to direct an invisible orchestra.

Smith rubbed at his forehead in exasperation. "So exactly how did you come up with the name?"

The woman stopped twirling absentmindedly, staring wide-eyed at both the men in lab coats. "You still don't get it?"

When she was met with two blank stares, she raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Wow, I've finally managed to beat you two genii in something." She began giggling in glee. "I'll give you a hint; it's a combination of your names."

The men shared another look, both exasperatedly amused at the strawberry blond woman. The woman in question gave them a mock glare before breaking into giggles again.

After a few moments of silence, Vince quietly spoke up with a soft, "...I think I got a part of it."

When the two turned to him, Vince pointed at the letters. "JCI is probably for the initial of our middle names, with yours at the end, right?"

"Yup, my middle name's there because I think I deserve an honorary mention," The woman said with a wink. "Halfway there, Vince!"

Smith looked at the woman with a raised brow. "And the '2' and the '5'?"

The woman stepped up to the table and pointed at each letter with a pen. "Okay, first off, because it's a _science_ project, I thought you would like the mysterious and cool-looking mess of letters that only makes sense when explained."

Vince, who had been taking a sip of coffee, choked, coughing violently while Smith sighed dramatically at the woman and patted Vince's back.

The woman rolled her eyes and continued. "But I was thinking that only having letters was boring, so I changed the Q and V to numbers, because cursive Q is like a 2, and a V in Roman numerals is a 5." A small smile quirked her mouth. "Cool, huh?"

"... Project two-five-J-C-I... It's does sound very... _scientific_." Smith commented with teasing sarcasm.

Vince looked at the two of them and shrugged. "... If you two think it's okay, then it's good enough for me."

"You're really using my idea?" The woman said, getting a sparkle in her gold-flecked gray eyes. "Project 25JCI?"

After sharing yet another look, the men nodded in agreement.

"Least we can do for our future guinea pig, Monique." Smith said with a chuckle.

Pretending to look affronted, the woman, Monique, playfully shoved the older man. "Just admit that you can't think of a better name, Smith!"

The corner of Vince's mouth quirked up as he watched his two most favorite people in the world banter and boast about how they each had the _best naming skills in the world, thank you very much_.

{(000)}

"So this is the first test for the electromagnetic entrance field that would be the gate that people pass through to get to the next gate. Each variation of color gives off a different feeling. There should be no pain involved, only different sensations."

Vince had a clipboard and pen in hand, checking over the readings from the screen nearby. "I've already tried it out, and the feeling is not... _un_ pleasant."

"It's actually quite pleasant," Smith inputted as he placed multiple sensors on Monique's hand. "But we do need more volunteers to test it out. Thanks for offering, Monique."

"Anytime."

To the side, Vincent winced at the blasé way that Monique was treating this whole experience.

"...Monique, are you sure you want to do this? We don't yet know the full side-effects... It's bad enough that Smith chose to take part when the original plan was just using me only as the tester. We can always get someone else —"

"Oh shush, Vince, I totally can do this. None of the lab mice or you or Smith are showing any side-effects. I can't wait!" Monique said, lightly punching Vince in the arm with her unwired hand.

"Alright... if you're sure..."

"Just tell me when I can touch the warp portal!"

"Wait just until — _what_ did you call the electromagnetic entrance field?"

"That's way too long, Vince." Monique said, rolling her eyes. "Seriously, both of you and your naming skills."

She ignored the twin looks of disbelief and annoyance from both Vince and Smith, waving her unwired hand as if flicking imaginary holy water over the portal.

"I now christen thee 'warp portal', in honor of all those games and fantasy adventure novels where teleportation was only an idea, or a very expensive skill. Now that we're half-way to making the impossible 'warp portal' something _possible_ , thus your name shall be until some other fellow a few centuries later makes the next revolutionary transport device to change history, like the wheel, the horse, the car, the airplane, and the 'warp portal'."

Kruger opened a mouth to protest, but a jab and a subtle shake from Smith had him close it back again, still looking a little mutinous.

Monique was oblivious to the nonverbal conversation between the scientists, gazing dreamily at the shimmering blue electromagnetic waves.

"You know, this reminds me of a description of dragon scales that I read somewhere. The dragon was described as beautiful with the various shades of the same color that darkens on the outside and pales to a near translucency in the — ooh, did you just see that? That wave — no, ripple — well, not exactly like a water ripple, but a sand ripple with electricity shot —"

"Yes, yes, we get it, Monique," Smith said, cutting her off, giving her a soft pat and a nod to Vince to show that he was done. "You can talk literature and art a little later. We're ready for you, dear."

Monique hummed her understanding, eyes still full of wonder as she stepped forward toward the translucent circular portal. Slowly, she dipped her fingers, then hand through the field. They could all see her hand sticking right through the visible electromagnetic field, looking slightly rippled as if looking through a stream of water.

"Oh my _gosh_." Monique whispered, giving the two scientists a wide-eyed look, full of amazement and subdued awe. At her reaction, both Vince and Smith glowed with pride.

Smith broke the easy silence. "Amazing, isn't it? We couldn't find words to describe it. Haven't linked it to another gate yet, either, and _that_ might change the sensations even further. But my theory is that full body immersion will mean feeling that tingle _everywhere_ , unless we come up with some kind of protection... hmm..."

Suddenly, the portly scientist grabbed the nearest pen and blank sheet of paper, muttering about developing special clothing for the trip through the electromagnetic field.

When they heard some of the older man's ramblings of _'Special clothing possibly canceling out the teleportation process, meaning leaving the_ clothing _behind? Or body parts? ...By Newton's Law of Gravity, don't tell me we have to travel_ nude _!'_ , the younger couple chuckled at Smith's scandalized tone.

A while after the hilarity from Smith's flustered scribbling and mutterings died down, Vince cocked an eyebrow at Monique in silent question, holding up his own pen and notebook.

Rolling her eyes at the man's insistence for _science_ , Monique began describing what she was feeling, moving her fingers in and out of the electromagnetic field to see if there were any differences.

"It's like... cold jello. Shot with static."

"Do you feel any pain?" Vince asked carefully, slight worry in his eyes.

Monique deftly shook her head, a slight frown on her face as she tried to figure out what she was feeling.

"No, just... it feels strange, as if all the hairs on my hand is standing up on edge. And I say jello because every time I wiggle my fingers over the surface, there's a certain... give. And the staticky feeling moves along my fingers as I — oooh!"

Vincent immediately stopped fiddling with the controls and was quickly at Monique's side, gently pulling her hand out from the field. He questioned her sharply, a deep frown on his face.

"What happened?"

Monique gave him a small smile to show that she was alright, and wriggled her fingers to show that they were fine.

"It's nothing bad, Vince. The feeling changed just then. Um. The hair-raising thing, that part feels... stronger? and all... ripply. Like... rubbing a balloon on your arm, then somehow the balloon changes shape and does the... tango?"

"Hmm..."

As Vince quickly jotted that down, Monique slowly plunged her fingers back in the electromagnetic field.

"Perhaps it has to do with the fact that she's a woman?" Smith suggested from across the lab, turning back to his work after checking that there was nothing wrong. "Women have different sets of hormones and chemicals, all which would respond differently to electricity and to magnetism."

"That might be it... Monique, would you mind — What are you doing?"

The woman in question was trying to follow a spark that was moving erratically across the circular warp gate.

"The spark gives off the strangest of combination of feelings. It's quite nice, and I could get used to the feeling."

"What does it feel like?"

"Well, every time I try to grab the spark, the whole... _thing_ slips out with a tingle. It's just like grabbing... foam? made of jello?" She slowed down to check that Vince was keeping up, then continued. "Yeah, tiny jello bubbles that escape with static... That's the closest I can get to describing it."

"That's actually a really good description." Vince commented as he jotted everything down. He began to mutter how he, Smith and Monique had different levels of calluses on their hands, scribbling down a reminder on a holopad nearby to check the hand's sensitivity with the various sensations from the electromagnetic field.

He was in the middle of furiously jotting down notes and musings, focused entirely with the various factors that could affect the sensation when Monique's quiet and wistful voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Sometimes, I can't believe I'm your twin."

Vince stopped all he was doing and deliberately put down the holopad.

"Why all of a sudden?"

"Well... You're so... _smart_."

The young man gently took out Monique's hand again from the portal and began removing all the wires attached to it, not looking up into her eyes just yet.

When he was all done, he took her soft, small hands and weaved their fingers together, finally looking up into Monique's eyes.

"...Sometimes, I can't either. You're so... bright."

There was a short pause, both inspecting the intertwined hands but seeing something else, when Monique suddenly tilted her head and looked back into Vince's eyes.

"Vince, don't tell me you're comparing me to a 'light' and yourself to the 'darkness' or using some other symbolism of good and evil," Monique said with an exasperated smile. "I'm the English and Arts major around here, not you."

"But it's true," Vince quietly insisted, firm in his conviction. He continued to speak, forestalling Monique from doing anything besides blinking in surprise.

"And every time I'm around you... I feel whole." They both paused and reviewed what he said, and Vince snorted at the mischievous smirk Monique was sending him. "Really, as cliché as that sounds. It's like — like you are the half I never knew about but was always longing for. I just _know_ you are my half." _The better half,_ he added to himself.

Monique unlinked their hands and pulled Vince into a hug, with a small echo of 'you are my half'. He remained stiff in the hug, slightly uncomfortable and not quite sure of what to do.

When it didn't look like she would be letting go anytime soon, Vince slowly eased himself into the hug, wrapping his arms around his twin sister. He still couldn't quite get used to her tendency of hugging, though she gave quite good hugs.

"I'm just so glad to have found you," Monique whispered into his ear. "I wouldn't have known what to do after — After."

Vince unconsciously pulled her tighter to himself, as if trying to protect her from everything that might hurt her.

"I'm glad too," He whispered back. "I don't know what to do without you, either."

* * *

_Did you know that your body is held together by the smallest of atom particles, and no one really knows why it's held together?_

_...Oh, sure, someone can come up with theories and beliefs and provide sufficient evidence on_ how _it's put together._

_But could they answer_ why _?_

_Why do we exist?_

_Why do the atoms in us hold together and create this phenomena of 'life'?_

_What is 'life'?_

_Ah, yes, the fundamental question that has stumped ancient Greek philosophers, modern day metaphysical theologians, and everyday normal people alike._

_(Why do we live? Why are we here?)_

_One minuscule difference in the tilting of the earth, everything in the world wouldn't be what they are today._

_One tiny imbalance of the chemicals, and we die._

_One small flaw in a molecule could cause your body to break into tiny little pieces, which no one, except maybe some supernatural force, is able to put back together._

_One insignificant little touch._

_And it was a single touch that caused everything to come crashing down._

Everything _._

_A single innocent caress that pulled her into the void._

* * *

**[ _Memories_ ]**

"We have to stop this project."

Vince simply nodded in agreement, beginning to stack what notes were on his desk in an orderly fashion. Order was good. Order didn't get you wrong on so many levels.

"I'll let the department head know," He simply said.

"And I'll let Krei know... He's not going to like it." Smith muttered dejectedly.

"Well, he has been preparing this project for some time to show off to the government, hasn't he? But in the light of recent events... the danger of this project going wrong is quite high," Vince quietly commented, placing what data he had on his holopad and computer into an external memory unit. "Smith, I suggest that we pull it all into separate pieces and place it into storage separately, just in case."

"Yes, yes, that would be for the best." Smith said with a deep sigh. "Ah, we could have changed the world..."

"I'm sorry, Smith... It was — is your life's work... But to find that it brought over double the amount of created entropy from another _dimension_..." Vince trailed off, comforting the older scientist with an awkward pat on the shoulder.

With a sigh, Smith placed his own notes in the box Vince had set down.

"Someday, Vince. Someday, someone will develop a method to overcome the entire xeno effect when a particle is sent through the gates. But until then, I agree that this project will cause too many accidents. We're doing the right thing, sending it deep into the research archives." Smith intoned listlessly as he picked up the box of tools to dismantle the portal.

Vince picked up the larger box of data and notes, pushing open the door to the larger lab room with the portal, doing his best to cheer the older scientist up.

"Right. Can't let dimensions start colliding if too many things start traveling between them... which they will, if this is going to be used constantly for long-dista — _Monique!_ "

The portal, in their hurry to figure out what the initial readings were saying, had been left on.

And Monique, who had been one of their regular testers for feeling out the sensations of the portal, was right in front of it.

"Oh hey Vince, Smith! I was just going to test out this super-awesome dual-colored —"

While she hadn't been paying attention, one of her fingers, which were already _too close_ , touched a spark that jumped slightly off the surface of the magnetic field.

" _No!_ "

The figure in front of the portal was gone with a loud _zzwoop_ , and everything near the portal began moving towards it, forcing Smith to grab the railing nearby and Vince before he went flying off.

Vince was paying no attention to the havoc that the portal was causing, struggling in Smith's firm grip as he desperately yelled for his sister.

" _Monique!_ "

As the pull became stronger and stronger, Smith was forced to let go —

But a part of the portal ripped away from the supporting structure, ripping the delicate skeleton apart and stopping all movement before Vince could go flying towards the portal himself.

Vincent Kruger howled with fury, shouting at the portal to move back into place, to _turn back on_ , to _bring her back_.

He was still clinging desperately to one of the broken pieces of the portal sobbing the words _come back_ , when the paramedics knocked him out with an anesthetic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late than planned, sorry. Someone invited me to her house, and I didn't know that I was going to be really busy... And I didn't really want to post on 9-11.
> 
> Next update in less than a month. Enjoy.


	9. Lament of the Lost

**[Day: ?]**

Hiro slowly came to consciousness with a faint sense that he had been wronged in some way. It was incredibly cold, and a shiver spasmed down one of his arms. His eyes flickered open then quickly back closed at the light that shone into his eyes. He gave a soft moan at the pounding headache and an indistinguishable soreness that assaulted him from everywhere.

Another spasm went through his arm when something even colder and sharp pricked him. A heaviness followed the prick of pain up and down his arm — like heavy lead starting to weigh down his arm and hands —

 _There was something important_ , he detachedly thought. _I was doing something, but... I don_ _'t remember..._

He blearily squinted his eyes open again at the soft brush of fabric nearby. There was someone standing next to him, holding his arm.

"... Muh?" He slurred into the silence, his already slow thoughts slowing down and becoming scattered. "Wha's goin' on?"

The hands doing something to his arm were bigger than Tadashi's, with a lot of callouses. A crinkle formed between Hiro's eyebrows as he peered through his eyelashes trying to see who it was.

"Wh're's Aun' Cass —" Hiro muttered to the person, jerking half-heartedly away from the foreign hands. The light still hurt to look at, and he turned his head away with a louder mutter. "Too brigh'—"

Very soon after, there was a click of a switch and the lights turned off, plunging the room into darkness. Hiro blinked his eyes open and tried to adjust to the lack of light, trying to get his bearings again, but every blink was difficult, and he couldn't see anything in the dark.

 _Now it's too dark,_ Hiro wanted to complain, but only a discontented murmur made its way out of his mouth. He felt nothing, and coherent thoughts changed to abstract ideas and feelings, growing fewer in number until they stopped to become nothing.

* * *

**[ _Memories_ ]**

_"Vincent, may I speak with you?"_

_"Yes, Mr. Stromberg?"_

_"Vincent, call me Samuel. You've been my charge for almost an entire year. Surely you remember that."_

_"..."_

_"Well... I don't know how to say this, but... well. Someone wants to meet you."_

_"...Why?"_

_"She says that she is from your family_ — _"_

_"I don't have any family."_

_"Yes, that's what I thought as well, but my colleague in the records department has kindly sent me an updated file. It appears that some documents were misplaced with the introduction of new policies that came about around the same time_ — _"_

_"...What do you mean."_

_"Vincent, I don't want to get your hopes up_ — _it's not a parent, but a sibling. We don't know exactly what happened, but you two were separated at birth_ — _"_

_"At birth? ...You mean I have a twin?"_

_"Yes. You have a sister, going by the name of Monique Henderson."_

_"...A sister..."_

_"The poor girl. There was a car accident, with only Monique as the survivor. Her social worker and her adoptive parents had just found out about you_ _when the accident happened_ — _she decided to wait until after the funeral to let the girl know about you."_

{(000)}

_"Hello?"_

_["..."]_

_"Hello? Who is this?"_

_["...Hello."]_

_"Who are you?"_

_["...Um. I_ — _I_ — _"]_

 _"I believe you've called the wrong number. Good bye_ — _"_

 _["Wait!_ _Is_ — _is this Vincent Kruger's number?"]_

_"Yes. Who is this?"_

_["Um... I don't know if anyone told you about me yet, but I'm_ — _I'm Monique Henderson."]_

{(000)}

_"You know Vincent, honestly, I never expected to find anyone from my birth family."_

_"...?"_

_"After my parents let me know that I was adopted, I had told them that I kind of wanted to meet my biological parents, but not just yet. But they told Betty, who accidentally found some inconsistencies in my early documents and looked into it to find you. I think they wanted to surprise me."_

_"...Betty?"_

_"Oh, she's my social worker. She's very nice. We usually meet twice a year, just to check that everything is going okay."_

_"Ah."_

_"Of course, I didn't know about any of this. I think they were really excited to find that I actually had a twin brother... Betty said they had been talking about adopting you into the family and finalizing the plans when_ — _" She swallowed thickly, eyes bright. "When the accident happened."_

_"..."_

_"I'm so glad I found you though."_

_"...Me too, Monique."_

_"...I don't know what I would have done if I was all alone."_

{(000)}

_"Smith."_

_"Hey Vince! How are you doing this fine day?" Smith said as he looked up from his book. "Oh? And who could this young lady be?"_

_"This is Monique. Monique, Smith."_

_With a wry smile on face, Smith turned to Monique, shaking his head._

_"He really does get to the point with no explanations, does he? There really is no easy way to get used to his way of talking."_

_Monique giggled at the exasperated tone, nodding in agreement. She held out her hand to shake._

_"You must be Smith. Vince doesn't speak much, but when he does, he speaks a lot about you."_

_"Really?" Smith exclaimed, his voice full of honest surprise as he glanced at an embarrassed Vince._ _"That's flattering to hear. Well. Monique, was it? How do you know Vince?"_

_"...I'm his family." She said with a shy smile. "His twin, in fact."_

{(000)}

_"Vince."_

_Vince flinched at the warning edge in Smith's tone and turned, bracing himself for the disappointed look._

_Smith was standing in the doorway, arms crossed. He was still wearing his black suit from the funeral._

_"You weren't there at the reception."_

_"I refuse to waste my time while I can be doing something to bring her back."_

_"Vince."_

_"Smith, I agreed to the funeral, though I've told you that it was unnecessary."_

_"Unnece_ — _" Smith cut himself off with a sigh, his hands rubbing at his face. "Vince... Monique is gone."_

 _"No she's_ not _."_

 _"You saw the destruction_ — _"_

 _"I know that, but the set coordinates! Don't you remember the last setting we left the portal at?_ T _he closest dimension to_ _ours, where there was_ — _is a chance of a successful teleportation! Monique is not dead!"_

_"...Vincent." Smith said sadly. "You know as well as I do that there is less than a 10% chance of her making the trip safely all the way through."_

But she made it _, Kruger silently argued back._ I know she did.

* * *

**[Day: ?]**

There was a brief moment when Hiro woke in the darkness.

The vague sense of wrongness was there again, but nothing seemed out of order and his body was drowsy enough that a long time passed before he mustered enough willpower to open his eyes more widely.

Something bright flickered at the edge of his periphery; oranges, yellows, reds that were all too bright — it spread slowly, the flickering on the edges changing to a glare that filled his field of vision.

Hiro squinted into the light, a part of his mind wondering what would give off such a harsh and ominous light while his brain was giving warnings that it was consuming more than brightening everything in sight. His eyes slowly adjusted to the slowly brightening light, only to widen as it took in a room with his bed and a small table, an IV bag and hook next to him.

Inexplicable disquiet came from the quite normal looking IV bag, rising in intensity until he remembered that he was kidnapped, almost escaped, then captured again.

 _Don't tell me it's drugs_ —

Horrified, he tried to remove the IV, forgetting about the strange lighting that woke him. He watched in fascination as his arm without the IV sluggishly raised itself slightly then flopped onto his stomach before it got to its destination. To make it even more disturbing, he couldn't _feel_ anything throughout the experience.

 _Take deep breaths and calm-down-don't-panic,_ he mentally told himself, even as he realized that his breaths were controlled and shallow, not the big gasping breaths he wanted to take.

Before he could really panic, a sudden increase of light distracted him from his numb limbs and unknown chemicals, and Hiro turned to find an open doorway that let in more of the strange light — along with flames and smoke.

There was a shadowy silhouette outlined in the doorway by the glare of the fire, and Hiro's breath hitched — it was Tadashi, from his trademark cap down to the cardigan. His brother agitatedly ran towards him, the glare picking up the desperation in his face. He was silently saying something to him, but there was no sound, like a silent movie.

The relief on his face changed to worry and anger as he stepped towards him, and Hiro saw his perspective change to an upright position. He saw Tadashi's face up close and saw his lips moving to the words of his name, but again with no sound. The lethargy in the depths of his bones wouldn't give enough energy to answer, though he gave a small whimper-sigh and tried to lean-fall towards Tadashi.

With clear dismay, Tadashi cupped his cheek with his hand and opened his mouth to say something, only to tense and turn towards the doorway at something he couldn't hear. Before Hiro had a chance to wonder exactly what it was, he was quickly and carefully moved onto his brother's back after a quick hug.

As soon as Hiro was secured on his back, Tadashi began to run.

Things became a blur and Hiro didn't see how Tadashi managed it, but they somehow passed the flames into empty streets and slipped into one of the numerous shadowed alleys downtown of San Fransokyo. As they traveled, loud crashes and explosions began fading in, as if the audio of a movie was turning up from silence.

Dull impacts shook the earth, and judging from the huge crashes of buildings falling apart and sounds of blocks of concrete falling against each other, something big, really big, was following them.

"Come on, come on!" Hiro heard Tadashi muttering, running further and further away from the encroaching noise. Hiro could only loll his head woozily, trying to shake away the haziness away. Tadashi sounded really panicked, and the sinister banging noises were getting louder and closer.

A screech of metal came really close, and Hiro felt himself slide slightly on Tadashi's shoulder at the sudden jerk, and no amount of strength would allow him to pull back up onto a more stable hold. Before he completely fell off, Tadashi's hands grabbed his arm and shifted him back up as they rushed away again.

 _It's too fast,_ Hiro thought. _It's gaining on us._

He could feel and hear the harsh breathing of his brother, and there was another heartbeat close to his own that steadily increased in beats and strength. His own breathing and heartbeat was picking up, though it was still slow and controlled.

_Why is it following us?_

Before he had a chance to try and verbalize the question, all the color from the scene were swept away until he suddenly found himself in the dark, back in his original lying position. There was a faint artificial light coming from his right.

_...A dream?_

Disoriented, he took in his surroundings again to see a person standing right next to the bed on his right side, face hidden by the shadows from the light from behind. Hiro's breathing picked up, and a chill seeped into his bones. Fear spiked up and he jerked away as far as he could, only to feel himself restrained.

A quick glance down showed a blurry picture of his chest, shoulders, and arms loosely strapped down to the bed with what looked like velcro.

_Is this another dream?_

Breathing fitfully, Hiro's eyes flickered back to the figure and found him adjusting something dangling on a line — the IV, his mind supplied helpfully — and a cold feeling spread down his arm. He again pulled at his bonds, but his body was too weak to make a difference.

"No... Wait..." The adrenaline from the dream was fading, his breathing and racing thoughts slowing down. His unfocused eyes refused to clear up enough to see who it was clearly, and what small amount of feeling he had gotten back in his body was gone with the cold sneaking into his bones. Hiro shivered at the loss of feeling and the chill in his blood, vaguely hearing the rustle of a blanket being tucked in.

There was again nothing, all feelings and thoughts adrift in the suffocating darkness.

* * *

**[ _Memories_ ]**

_"Vincent, I thought we agreed not to give anything to Alistair."_

_"Krei just wanted to see how some refinements on the calculation would go. He had made some contributions that would make the transition from tangibility to intangibility easier."_

_"...But he would have had the chance to copy the files! You're the one who told me to be suspicious_ — _"_

_"Here are some new calculations. Would you plug in the coordinates?"_

_"...Dear Go-_ _Galileo," Smith said after a pregnant pause. "I can't watch this anymore... I've tried to convince you that this is futile, but everything I'm trying is not working!_

 _"This is not futile, I've told you_ — _"_

_"When was the last time you ate? The last time you slept? The last time you shaved?"_

_"That's not important_ — _"_

 _"_ — _It may not be for you, but it sure is helping you lose yourself and forget who you are, which is important to me!"_

_"Smith, I haven't changed. This is me."_

_"What, the 'yourself' from the past who you've tried to bury so hard? The one who wouldn't take care of himself while pursuing his goals with an unhealthy fixation? No, I refuse to believe that the smart man who chose to become logical, kind, and gentle_ — _the man who decided that this way of living was better that his past ways_ — _the Vince that I came to know and like_ — _is gone!"_

_Vince did not respond, looking frozen at Smith's passionate speech and gestures, holding the holopad with the new calculations limply in his hand._

_"...Vince, come back. Please. It's breaking my heart to see you like this."_

_Smith watched his_ _protégé's inner struggle, hoping for the best_ — _he saw the exact moment when Vince had come to a decision, eyes filling with purpose. The corner of Smith's mouth twitched up in a half-smile, expecting Vince to come to his senses now_ —

_"The new equations." Vince prompted Smith with a hint of stubbornness, holding out the holopad once more._

_Smith's smile froze, and Smith's eyes widened with barely hidden surprise before narrowing with anger._

_"_ Dammit _, you're supposed to be intelligent,_ _Vince!"_

_Vince almost dropped the holoboard in shock of the explosive reaction. It was very rare to hear Smith raise his voice, much less curse out loud._

_"...You... just..."_

_"Yes,_ dammit _, you heard me right! I just swore_ — _this is serious! Great_ God, _can't you see that she wouldn't have_ — _Monique would never have wanted this,_ god-dammit _!"_

_Smith took off his lab coat forcefully and threw it to the nearest chair. He then grabbed his car keys and wallet from the desk and headed for the door._

_"...Where are you going? Smith?" Vince couldn't stop the slight waver of insecurity in his voice as he spoke to Smith's retreating back._

_"I'm removing myself before I do something I'll regret, god-dam_ — _" Smith faltered when he saw Vince's face, pausing slightly before correcting himself quietly. "Gosh-darn it."_

 _"I'll be back in a couple of hours, Vince." He said, a sag in his shoulders and looking older than his age of late-thirties, turning and closing the lab doors with a quiet_ click _._

{(000)}

_"Please... please stop." Smith was looking more and more frustrated and desperate as each day passed._

_"Smith, you know I can't._ _I'm going to bring her back." Vince answered in a serene voice, hiding what misgivings he felt himself with confidence that the plan_ _would work, as it simulated the event to the letter, changing minimum amounts of equations and code._

 _"And you're killing yourself._ _"_

 _"...I don't care." He ignored the slight tremor in his hand as he faced the possibility of death, but everything was worth it in the end_ — _even death._

 _"Vincent Conrad Kruger_ — _"_

 _He interrupted Smith, before the man could give another speech trying to convince him away from the plan._ _"Can't you see, Smith? We're close to coming up with a way to bypass the junction diffraction effect. I'm not going to give up."_

_Smith opened his mouth as if to speak again, then stopped, moving slowly to lean against the nearest desk._

_"...I'm done with this." He said, shaking his head. He began to slowly take off his lab coat._

_"Smith...?"_

_The older man sighed, shuffling the loose-leaf pages on the desk in a semblance of order, smiling ruefully at his_ _protégé_ _._ _"I can't do it anymore, Vince. I'm watching you break yourself by stages..."_

 _Stepping closer to Smith, Vince tried not to let his insecurity show in his voice as he tried to convince his mentor to stay with the plan._ _"Smith, we've made progress_ — _"_

_"And to continue this 'progress', it needs you to work day and night without rest. Even then it would take years to finish. I can't take this."_

_"But_ — _"_

_"I'm not telling you to give up entirely. I'm telling you to slow down." Smith said, gently cutting off his objections. "It's unhealthy, but I get that you need to figure it out. But I, on the other hand... need a break. I'm still... dealing with the loss."_

_"It won't be a loss when we_ — _"_

 _"Vincent." Smith cut in again, tired but firm. "Don't ask me of this. Perhaps you just need time to get used to things... But me_ — _I can't help you with this. I can't even deal with_ this _myself." He said with a deprecating scoff._

 _Before Vince had a chance to respond, Smith continued._ _"She's gone, and you're acting like..." He_ _closed his eyes tightly and gesturing wordlessly towards Vince. "Like that."_

 _Vince knew he couldn't convince the man at the look in his eyes, but he still tried one last time._ _"Smith_ — _"_

_Smith waved him away tiredly, shaking his head._

_"...Call me if something comes up. I'll check up on you from time to time as well," The man said, turning towards the door with his hands in his pockets. "Don't worry, Vince. I'll be back."_

* * *

**[16 days since the fire]**

_"You can't possibly have held the boy_ against his will _?"_

 _At the slight flinch from Kruger, Smith blanched._ _"Vincent,_ what have you done _?"_

 _There was a long disbelieving silence_ — _Smith still unable to believe his own conclusions, and Vince berating himself for folding so quickly to Smith's form of interrogation._

 _"Vincent," Smith began. "Are you telling me that you have kidnapped an innocent boy because... he had come up with the right answer, probably_ by accident _? Because he would have given you another chance at producing another theory that_ may or may not work _? Because he had_ other good _ideas and solutions?"_

_Kruger looked slightly uncomfortable, but met Smith's eyes steadily. What guilt Smith could see in his eyes was smothered by desperation and slight hint of dementia. Smith's heart was in tatters at the near-wrecked state of his brilliant protégé that had happened in the time he was away._

_"I shouldn't have left you alone," Smith said with regret, holding Vince's shoulder's tightly, feeling the loss of muscle and weight._ _"You silly boy_ — _why can't you see that you're only hurting yourself?"_

{(000)}

_"Vincent, please, release him immediately. Do you have any idea what pain you've caused his fam –"_

_"No."_

_"By Newton's_ — _! Vincent, please. Don't be difficult and let the boy go. You don't have to do this."_

_"You know that if I let him go, he'll call the cops, and I won't be able to work on this anymore."_

_"Vincent_ — _"_

_"You don't understand! The boy's ideas have got me so close, I can taste it!"_

_"_ Vincent Conrad Kruger _, she's not coming back."_

_"She is. not. dead!"_

_In the silence, Vince breathed roughly from the explosion of his angry retort._

_Smith put both hands in the air in a placating manner, looking quite distressed at the situation._

_"...Vincent, please. Think this through. What would Monique say when she sees you like this?"_

_When he gave no reply, Smith inspected Vince again and eyed his dark bags and the clothes that hung more loosely on his frame. Smith muttered angrily at himself, a tinge of anguish coloring his tone._ _"By Einstein... just where did I go wrong with you?"_

 _A flash of emotion flickered through the younger man's eyes, but Vincent remained unrepentant of his actions._ _"Smith, you are either with me or against me. You can either help look over the equations, or_ — _or_ — _"_

 _He almost didn't continue talking at the hurt look from Smith, but with a mental shake, he forged onwards. He knew Smith would choose the option he wanted; Smith had to choose that option, because if he didn't_ —

 _Vince paused, the clear reluctance in his body language counteracting his confident voice when he spoke again._ _"Or... I'll hurt the boy."_

 _Smith snapped up with even more attention, if that was possible._ _"You wouldn't do that."_

_Vince stopped a moment, seemingly rethinking the ultimatum he had handed Smith. The cold calculating part of him, the part he had worked so hard to repress over the years, was on full force, measuring, balancing what he would and would not do to get her back._

_"...You're wrong, Smith," He replied a little sadly. "Yes, I will. If it means I can get to Monique, then you know I will."_

_Silence filled the darkened warehouse-turned lab. Vince didn't know what to think of the suffocating silence. He felt Smith's crushing disappointment, yet it wasn't stronger than the oppression of the absence in his life._

_"Smith... Smith, please... please don't force me to_ — _to..."_ Please don't force my hand.

_Smith remained silent, turning his face away slightly, not meeting Kruger's eyes._

_"I can't do this... life without her... I have no reason to live. If you care about me at all_ — _"_

 _The older man abruptly spoke up, indignation briefly relighting the fire in his eyes. "_ If _I care about you?"_

_Smith threw his hands up in frustration, beseeching the spider-webbed ceilings for guidance with a wordless sound of frustration._

_"All these years_ — _" He started, only to stop suddenly with a serious expression. "...Vince, am I not a good enough reason to live?"_

_At the shocking statement, Vince's eyes widened in surprise, his thoughts coming to a halt._

_Seeing his shock, Smith calmed down a little and spoke gently, if a little amusedly._

_"Oh Vince, didn't you know?_ _" He said. "_ _You've wormed yourself into my heart the moment you began sprouting physics trivia to try and one-up me, way back when you were in your teens."_

_Smith waited for a response, but when none was forthcoming, he continued to speak, eyes softening at the confusion in Vince's body language._

_"I care. I care very much about you, Vincent. I didn't wake up one day to decide to replace all my swear words and cusses with equivalents in scientific discoveries and people. It was for a certain teenage boy who thought I'd be intimidated by his knowledge of cusses."_

_Vince was struck dumb with the information. He had always thought the habit of using physics terms was due to Smith's almost obsessive love for physics._

_Smith looked a little embarrassed by the confession, scratching behind his head with a slight flush in his face._ _"You were swearing so much and didn't seem to stop so I thought... if I, your tentative role model used interesting, clean curses instead..."_

_Smith trailed off, a wistful look in his eyes as he remembered something from the past._

_The middle-aged man shook off the nostalgia, remembering that he had a point to make. Smith spoke with down-to-earth sincerity, looking straight into his protégé's eyes._

_"...Vince, you're the son I've never had. Do you really think your life is not worth living? Not even for me?"_

_Vince bewilderedly observed his heart and emotions going on a figurative roller coaster, starting with the pure joy from the acceptance, undisguised disbelief in Smith's words, inexplicable embarrassment at his flustering, overall confusion of what he was feeling, followed by an utter dread for what this meant for his plans._

_"I don't_ — _I can't_ — _" He pulled back away from Smith, unconsciously bringing his arms closer to himself, clutching at his own arms. "I can't give up now... not when I'm so close..."_

_He didn't notice how Smith's tentative smile faded away, replaced with a pained look. Without looking up, Vince continued to speak, remembering what it was like with Monique around._

_"...Smith, you saw me with her. You saw how different I was after meeting her; she was the light of my world. My past_ — _You know how much she means to me, after experiencing so much pain."_

_Vince slowly picked his bowed head up with hope, conviction and resolve in his earnest look to his mentor and friend._

_"If meeting you was like learning there was more to life than darkness, meeting her... meeting her was like opening my eyes to find myself alive, a blind man who finally began to see. She was_ — _is_ — _my everything. You... you know this. You_ know _this. Please Smith."_

Let me do this _, were his unspoken words._

_Smith began to speak quietly, his emotions growing more passionate as he went on._

_"But there is absolutely no guarantee that this will succeed;_ theory _can only do so much_ — _for all I know, I'm helping you commit suicide!" Smith retorted, agitatedly raking a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair._ _"Don't make_ me _do this, Vince. I've already lost a part of you already, when Monique_ — _"_

_"Quincy," Vince interrupted. "I'm not going to die."_

_Smith stopped in surprise at the name and statement, and Vince repeated himself, to make sure that the older man got the message._

_"Monique is not dead, and I will not die before bringing her back."_

_Smith blinked at the blunt wording, and opened his mouth to argue back, but Vince again talked over him._

_"Smith_ — _Quincy, I can't prove it, but something... no, every part of my being has no doubt that Monique is alive_ — _you know me, doubtful to the bone_ — _and here when I say 'no doubt', I mean 'no doubt'. Something... something is telling me she's alive and waiting."_

_When Smith remained silent, Vince spoke again, entreating the older man._

_"I am going to get her, and then we'll find a way back together. I don't know how, but... somehow." Smith snorted with disbelief, but Vince saw that Smith was at least thinking about it, so continued. "We'll even go celebrate afterwards, staying out of the labs for once. Monique will be ecstatic."_

_Smith didn't speak for a long time, staring at Vince yet seeing something else. His face and expressions continued to shift from a tentative hope to despair and grief; anyone would have thought Smith was trying to display the range of human emotions, if not for the serious atmosphere._

_As the older man thought, he paced and muttered to himself, sometimes asking Vince questions only to immediately answer them himself before the younger man had a chance to answer. Vince waited patiently, knowing that Smith would take a while to think everything through. He had no idea if Smith really would help him, but Smith knew the times he meant what he said_ —

_"...It's dangerous. We don't know if it will really work."_

_Vince couldn't help the growing hope. Smith just needed a little more push to be convinced and knew it, from the disgruntled and unhappy look on his face._

_"What_ isn't _dangerous? That's what you said before you stuck a finger into one of the warp gate prototypes. This is what history is made of_ — _normal people ignoring the dangers for the pursuit of knowledge. Where would we be if everyone decided to only do what was safe?"_

 _Smith looked long at the younger man in front of him, still ambivalent about the plan_ — _but after a few more moments of thinking, he came to a reluctant decision. With a deep sigh, he took a seat in the chair nearby, rubbing at his forehead. Vince perked up, not able to hold back his smile of relief at seeing all the signs of Smith's agreement._

_"Vincent," Smith said resignedly. "I will help you... against my better judgment."_

_He swept a hand through his messy hair, troubled, when his eyes landed on the video feed to remember their source of the argument._ _"And you have to let the kid go. His family might call the police and try to look for you, but you need to let him go."_

_Vincent paused in his inward celebration and nodded with seriousness._

_"I will."_ Just... not yet, _he added to himself._ But —

 _"I promise that I will." He moved towards the video feed, planning on turning it off and setting it up elsewhere and getting the boy to finish the last part of_ —

_"Hand over those equations again, would you? Let me look at them again."_

_Pulled out of his mental plans, Vince quickly grabbed the sheets nearby that he had all but shoved into Smith face, looking expectantly back for his second opinion. After a few seconds of perusal, Smith stifled a curse._

_"This is_ still _suicidal. I must be crazy. Why am I letting you do this?"_

_However, contrary to his words, Smith still got up from his chair and walked towards the holoboard with purpose._

_Involuntarily, Vince's hand reached out towards him, but stopped before it made contact with the man's shoulder. Vince looked conflicted before he retracted the arm, clearing his throat instead to bring Smith's attention back towards himself._ _"Please Smith... do your best."_

 _Smith snorted, rolling his eyes at him._ _"Vince, Monique was someone who was equally as dear to me as to you."_

_He shook his head, shooting a semi-annoyed look at Vince. "Maybe a smidgen more, because you act like the unruly son that I never had, being all troublesome and rebellious."_

_"Oh, and don't forget suicidal." He added with a snort. "By Newton's Law of Gravity, '_ _I'm not going to die'?_ _You don't_ know _that."_

_Vince hesitantly reached out and squeezed the man's arm, conscious of Smith's surprise._

_"But I'm not going to die." He repeated. After all, it was a promise to return no matter what, back to Smith._

_There was a long pause while Smith and Vince remained silent, keeping eye contact._

_Smith broke the silence with a mixed look at the younger man._

_"...Even if you hadn't asked,"_ _he said. "I would have done my best anyway. If I'm going to do this for you, I don't want to be the one to kill you."_

_Flickers of grief, guilt, pride, and something Vince could not identify warred in the older man's eyes, his thin facade of calm and acceptance doing very little to hide his inner turmoil and the moistening eyes._

_"Quincy_ — _" Vince began, inwardly debating the merits of a hug, when Smith stepped away and turned towards the board, hiding his face._

_"Don't call me that." Smith retorted sharply._

_If his voice was shaking slightly and close to cracking, Vince knew enough tact not to mention it._

_Vince headed for the lab doors, wondering if this was the time to 'give someone space'. But before he left the room, he remembered one of the first things he learned from Monique_ — _so he turned and spoke to Smith's back with as much sincerity as he could._

_"Thank you, Smith."_

_As he closed the door behind him, there was an small mutter of 'I'd be a horrible parent' from Smith's direction._

* * *

**[Day: ?]**

This time, Hiro found himself walking in... nothing. He was somewhere, but there was something inexplicably empty about the space, with no words to describe the emptiness, no color to describe the lighting.

He didn't know where he was going, but he continued to walk forward.

He turned at a soft meow of a cat — _Mochi?_ — and found his aunt with Mochi in her arms.

"...Aunt Cass?" He called out hesitantly.

She turned and found him, and looked as if she didn't believe what she was looking at. "...Hiro?"

She let Mochi land on the floor, and the feline immediately made its way to Hiro's legs, purring as it rubbed against his calf. At the display of affection, his aunt rushed towards him as well, almost picking him up from the tight hug.

"Oh, Hiro, my baby... My poor baby..." She whispered, stroking his hair as she held him close.

Hiro relaxed into her hug, limbs feeling weak as he leaned as close to her as possible. She smelled like cinnamon and coffee and there was a hint of spicy chicken on her clothes. Mochi sat herself down on his feet, purring as loudly as possible.

Soon, he began to feel uncomfortable and suffocated; Aunt Cass had a tendency of hugging _really_ tightly, though they were really good hugs. "Aunt Cass, you're choking me."

She pushed herself away, a hand wiping away a tear. "Sorry dear. It's just —" she held him out an arm's length away, holding onto his shoulders as she took in his appearance. "...Last hug?"

"...Yeah, okay — " He was pulled into the hug before he could finish. "— just not too tight."

"Hiro..." She mumbled into his hair. "It was so difficult."

"What was?" _Was this yet another dream?_ he hoped it wasn't. Aunt Cass gave great hugs, even if they were a little tight.

"With you gone, everything was so different..." she began, but Hiro didn't hear anything past the first few words.

 _So this is a dream,_ he thought absently, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat.

 _Would I ever see her again?_ It didn't look like he was getting free anytime soon, and he had no idea what the kidnapper would do after his usefulness ended.

"... there's an extra chair at the table, and Mochi keeps looking for you..." There was a small sniff, and she reached around him to wipe at her eyes again.

Hiro gave her a little pat, not really knowing what to do for comfort, even if she was made by his own mind.

"Aunt Cass," he began. "I..."

There was so much he wanted to tell her: s _orry for always being in trouble, sorry for being so selfish, sorry for going bot-fighting all the time, sorry for worrying you every day and night, sorry I didn't really like to hug you, please don't cry I hate seeing you cry and I don't know what to do, I love you Aunt Cass_ —

"I want..."

 _I want to go back home, I want Tadashi here, I want you, I want this to stop, I don't like this at all, why did this happen to me, do you think I died too_ —

He wanted so many things, but only one thing came out of his mouth.

"...I don't want to die," he whispered to the soft scent of cinnamon and coffee.

* * *

**[19 days since the fire]**

_"I thought you said you would let the boy go!"_

_"I said I will_ — _"_

_"No, this has gone far enough! You don't need him. I'm taking him back to his family."_

_"Smith, wait_ — _"_

_"Vincent, can't you imagine the pain the family is going through? They probably think he ran away!"_

_"..."_

_"I'm taking him home, blast the police."_

{(000)}

_"...Who are you?"_

_"My name is Smith. Let's get you out of here."_

_"...Really?"_

_"Really."_

{(000)}

_"I'll get you home, kid. Come on."_

_"...You're Hiro Hamada?!"_

* * *

**[Day: ?]**

Warmth surrounded him, and Hiro felt the soft blankets on top and cozy mattress underneath — a nice bed.

Well, to be more precise, his own bed.

His limbs were heavy, like that one time he had to stay in bed an entire two days from the nasty cold, but his arm moved slowly and limply towards his head when directed.

The pounding in his head was worsened by the sound of someone treading up the stairs, and Hiro blinked towards the stairway and saw Tadashi's mop of messy hair bobbing up, followed by Tadashi's slightly worried face, followed by his torso carrying a tray of food.

"Good, you're awake," Tadashi said with a smile. "Just in time for your medicine and meal.""You doing okay, buddy? You were sleeping pretty fitfully when I checked on you."

Hiro remained silent, looking around his room for any discrepancies of his room. So far, everything was holding up, from the mess of papers on his desk to the slightly dusty figurines on the shelf, to Tadashi's half-visible room past the screen door.

"Come on, knucklehead. Eat." Tadashi had placed the tray of food in front of him, sitting on the chair, watching him expectantly.

"Not hungry." He muttered, turning away from the food.

"You've got to eat before taking your medicine."

"No."

Tadashi just gave him a long look, but Hiro refused to meet his brother's eyes or the plate of food.

"...Hiro, what's wrong?" Tadashi placed the tray of food on the desk, sitting down on the bed and checking his head with a hand.

Hiro dithered, deliberating if he really wanted to know if this was a dream or not.

He somehow managed to stammer out a variation of the question of differentiating between a dream or reality, and Tadashi didn't look surprised at all and just accepted his line of questioning.

"Well... I don't really know, but people say pinching yourself does help?"

While Hiro digested the sensible suggestion, Tadashi hesitantly asked a question.

"...Uh, Hiro, what do you remember about the SFIT showcase?"

Hiro froze, remembering in flashes of the orange flames and the acrid smell of smoke, the too-sweet smell of chloroform, the bouts of depression from the isolation, and the hated, hated color gray everywhere.

At Tadashi's gentle prodding for an answer, Hiro simply shook his head, overwhelmed by the flashes of memory.

With understanding in his eyes and a mutter of 'bastard' under his breath, Tadashi asked if he would like for him to tell him what happened.

It was noted a few days after the fire that someone had witnessed a man taking him away, though they didn't realize who it was at the time. It would have not been noticed, but the witness had thought it strange that the boy was unconscious but the man didn't go to the paramedics outside the building.

What should have followed was a city-wide search for the culprit, but there had been a series of bot-fighting gang fights that stretched the already-thin police force even thinner, causing more delays in the search.

"We were doing everything to get you back, but there were no ransom notes, no clues, nothing." Tadashi sighed, shifting himself to get more comfortable. "There was even talk that you might already be... well, dead."

At the sharp intake of breath, Tadashi paused, looking worriedly at his brother.

"Then... when we had all but given up... we followed up this tip from someone who said he saw something suspicious. We found you."

 _Found me._ _They had found me,_ he thought, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

However, Hiro didn't say anything when he remembered the sense of déjà vu, quickly wiping away at his tears. It wouldn't leave him, and so he waited for the other shoe to drop. When Tadashi didn't break the silence, choosing to watch him carefully instead, Hiro hesitantly reached out and poked at Tadashi's arm.

"Hiro..." Hiro looked up to see Tadashi's pained expression. "Scoot over."

Tadashi shuffled around some more and scooted him over on the bed, lying down next to him. He gave his hair a rough tousle.

It again felt off, and before Hiro had a chance to really check, Tadashi sighed, breaking him away from his musings.

"Hiro, relax. It's not like I'm a stranger."

Hiro just stares back at the impostor, his figment of imagination with an unreadable look in his eyes.

As if he could read his mind, the Tadashi on the bed pulls on the sincere expression of his brother.

"I swear this is not a dream. Do you want me to pinch you?"

Hiro can't ignore that though the expression looks right, there's something that feels... wrong.

But did he want to wake up right now? Did he really want the proof that this was not real?

Hiro hesitated a brief moment, before resolutely shaking his head.

Tadashi looked surprised at his answer, and his mouth opened as if to comment, but Hiro cut him off.

"I don't care if this is a dream."

There is a frown of confusion on Tadashi's face, and all Hiro could think was I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, simply burrowing closer to Tadashi's side.

He muttered, almost to himself, and to the fake-Tadashi by his side, shivering violently at a chill that the blankets couldn't ward off.

"My brain's trying to cope with you not being there, and keeps putting you and Aunt Cass into my dreams and it's driving me crazy, is it really you or is it my imagination, because you are like this but every time I get comfort something is wrong and feels off, and I wake up to find that it isn't real, it's a _dream_ —"

"Hiro—"

"— I can't mentally build our room in my head anymore, because everything reminds me that I am not actually home and what I really want I can't get, because — because —"

"Hiro, breathe —" Tadashi was sitting up with alarm, straightening the hunched shoulders in his grip to ease the breathing.

"— I'm still in an isolated nightmare where the only human contact is through a chat service, and I'm not rescued." Hiro finished, taking deep breaths to take back what air he lost during his rant.

Tadashi froze, his face horrified. "Hiro, no —"

"Stop! Just —" Swallowing thickly, Hiro tried to calm his breathing and soothe out his turbulent feelings. "Just stay as you are. Don't talk. Please."

Tadashi remained thankfully silent, looking at a loss at what to do.

Hiro kept his eyes open, looking up at the copy his mind made of his brother, and leaned into Tadashi for a hug, noting the inexplicable, slightly off feel of the action.

"Tadashi," he whispered. "I don't want to wake up."

Tadashi didn't respond.

"Everything is blurry. It feels real, but something isn't... right."

"...It's your medicine, knucklehead. Your immune system took a hit when we rescued you. You hadn't been eating properly."

Hiro shifted his head up and gave Tadashi, real or not, a look.

"Whatever. Just... stay."

Tadashi looked disturbed, but nodded.

"Don't leave me yet, do you hear?" Hiro whispered, feeling the pull of sleep. "Stay until I sleep."

Hiro felt Tadashi nod, and began to relax his body, the world turning blurrier. A warm hand stroked the top of his head, and Hiro said nothing about the strangeness about the touch. Remaining still, Hiro slowly closed his eyes, the nearby warmth lulling him to sleep as he willed for nothing else to interrupt the peaceful dream.

* * *

**[19 days since the fire]**

_Smith was grunting at the door, commenting to the boy about the door, and Vincent hesitated before the colder side of him crushed all feelings of his guilt into a tiny little ball._

_He silently subdued the boy, all but ignoring the sting of guilt when the boy succumbed in a few seconds with only a soft gasp. Quietly laying him against the wall, he approached Smith, who was talking his thought processes out loud like he did when he was thinking about a particularly difficult problem._

_Without putting much thought into his actions, he lowered Smith onto the floor gently, making sure that the man was unconscious as he dealt with the boy first. Smith hadn't done much to resist, except to jerk in surprise and give the standard escape attempt to get the cloth off his face. He wondered what that said of him, to be so used to using chloroform that he knew what a 'standard' escape attempt was, and that all his actions came quite naturally._

_He put a hand in his pocket, looking for the syringe he had prepared in the short time Smith had left the room to rescue the boy. He noticed that the boy was aware of what was happening, probably due to the very short exposure to the chemical. Ignoring the soft displeasure of his own actions, he leaned down and jabbed the syringe and its contents_ — _sedatives_ — _into the pulse of the boy's neck, stopping immediately in case of an overdose when they clouded with sleep and closed._

_As he placed the boy in the medical bed that he prepared after the boy's first escape attempt, a short thought stopped him when he was about to place an IV in the boy's arm. Would Monique really want me to go this far?_

_Before he had a chance to think more on the troubling thought, the boy groaned and woke, disoriented and muttering things about his aunt. Without acknowledging the cold shock at the boy's awareness, Vince quickly added the remainder of the sedative syringe to the IV, all but scrambling to make sure the boy remained asleep and unaware._

_Mentally reminding himself to check on the boy in an hour before the sedative wore off again, he walked back to where Smith was, but the disquiet in his mind was growing. He gently moved Smith off the floor back to the make-shift lab, handcuffing him to a wall near the screens that monitored the newly-built warp gate, far enough away that the whiplash of colliding dimensions wouldn't affect him as much._

_Making the last minute changes and preparations while waiting for Smith to wake, Vince detachedly wondered if Smith would ever forgive him. He had burnt almost all the bridges to his and Smith's relationship while working to bring Monique back. What little was salvaged in the little heart to heart a few days ago was probably almost gone, if not already._

_Once the preparations were finished, he would be leaving the dimension_ — _to another world. He had prepared extensively, but there still was a chance that he wouldn't find Monique or ever make it back to Smith. Yet, all he was concerned with was whether Smith and Monique, his most important (his_ only _important) people_ — _if they would still want him, after all he had said and done had come to light._

_Vince glanced back at the man slumped in the chair. The older man wasn't waking up immediately, but Vince was expecting it. Smith had all but worked to exhaustion in the past day, not sleeping as he looked over the equations again and again while Vince built the remaining portion of the portal and began to set it up. The sudden introduction of unconsciousness had probably caused Smith's body to rest the tired mind and body. Smith would probably not wake for about a few hours, probably a couple of hours when taking into account yesterday's sleepless night; Smith was getting quite old to continue going strong with no sleep, after all._

_In a couple of hours, everything would be ready._

_Then all he needed to do was take a single step._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another nifty timeline:
> 
> Day 0 - Fire (CI&PMWY Ch. 1)
> 
> Day 15 - Hiro begins having nightmares (CI Ch. 4)/Unmasking of Youkai (PMWY Ch.5,6)
> 
> Day 16 - Hiro breaks down, Vince calls for Smith
> 
> Day 17 - Smith discovers Hiro, is persuaded to help Vince with the condition of letting Hiro go
> 
> Day 19 - Smith finds Hiro is not let free yet (Hiro thinks it's Day 18), Vince recaptures Hiro and finishes preparations.


	10. The Leap of Faith

**[20 days since the fire]**

Waiting.

It seemed that it was all he did now.

Waiting for the perfect moment.

The moment was soon; Smith was going to wake soon.

"Smith," He called, inwardly hoping against all hope that he wouldn't wake up.

Looking death in the face, however sure he was that he wouldn't die —

His musings were interrupted by a soft groan; Vince stood from his seat at the controls, and slowly walked to Smith, who was still handcuffed to the railing in the wall, sitting in a chair.

Smith shifted and rubbed his face with a groan. "Ugh... my neck... what's happ —" He stopped when he saw Vincent standing still in front of him, watching silently.

With a flicker of uncertainty and dread, Smith's face began to crumple horridly. He groggily began getting out of the chair, only to stop when he found his hand handcuffed.

The short look of shock and betrayal sent his way ripped a pang of guilt through Vincent. To escape the reproachful look, Vincent glanced back at the portal controls, making sure they were out of reach yet visible.

The blinking lights of the controls reminded him that he only needed to press a button then take one step for everything he had been working on these past months to prove true or die trying.

"No..." Vince turned back to Smith at his trembling voice. Smith was shakily standing with a hand on his head, looking at the controls of the portal with dread. "It can't be ready yet... Vince, I haven't checked over everything yet, wait —"

Vince quietly cut him off. "Everything is as perfect as it can get."

Smith was struck dumb by that simple statement, all his arguments dying out when he realized the finality of Vince's words. His head began shaking in denial as if it would take away the situation, Smith's unrestrained hand reaching for the younger man in silent begging.

"I'm ready now." Vince said with a final tone, turning away from the outstretched hand and towards the portal. The last goodbye, before who knew when they would see each other next.

"You _promised_." The desperate tone to the two words stopped him short, and Vince turned back at his mentor and his long time friend.

 _Promised to come back alive_ , it went unsaid in the silence.

Without answering, Vince walked to the portal controls and methodically flipped switches to turn the electromagnetic field on. With a great crackle of energy, the blue-purple lights of the warp gate turned on, and the winds began going wild, whipping loose paper everywhere as things began to be dragged towards the gate.

"Yes, I did promise," Vince finally answered, in a voice so soft that Smith almost didn't hear it from the racket the portal was making.

Vince turned once more towards Smith, solemn and serious. Smith had his eyes glued to his face, drinking in his appearance, looking so much more older, as if Atlas holding up the world. The wrinkles of worry and fear were almost permanently etched onto his brow. He seemed to be trying to memorize everything of his appearance, unconsciously pulling at the handcuffs as he leaned forward a little more.

Vince swallowed once more, glanced at the portal behind him and smiled back at Smith. It was painfully fake, but he couldn't bring himself to even try to make it real.

"Goodbye," he called out. "I'll be seeing you, Smith."

He then turned and took a fortifying breath: _one- two-_ three —

and took a step.

As all feeling in his feet and body was sucked out followed by the sting of static and chill of ice, Vince thought he heard shouts behind him, one clearly saying 'wait' —

But the small detail was pushed back to the back of his head when all the colors fell apart into a world of violent blue, violet and a splash of pink.

* * *

(000)

_*Beep*_

_["Tadashi, this is Smith. I... I think I need you and your_ _friends' engineering help breaking down some pieces of machinery back into storage."]_

_There was a deep sigh and a rustling in the background._

_["My coworker just contacted me, and I'm getting the feeling that he has been working on a teleportation portal without my knowledge. I don't want any trouble, so I would prefer to do this without the authorities giving too much of a fuss. Anyway, please call me back."]_

_*Beep*_

(000)

**[20 days since the fire]**

Tadashi wondered again about the voice message from Smith. He had gotten it the day they found out who Youkai was, and hadn't gotten a chance to hear it until very much later, after Callaghan had been unmasked. Tadashi had called several times in the midst of the whirl of events that had followed the arrest of Callaghan at Krei Tech, but every time he had ended up in Smith's voice mail, and he couldn't help but have a bad feeling about the whole thing.

He had finally visited Smith's office, and found nothing out of order. His coworkers and fellow office-workers just mentioned that he hadn't been in for a couple of days, and that he hadn't said anything about it. All Tadashi found at Smith's office section was a notepad with a written address. A quick search showed the address to be a warehouse down by the Southern piers; after letting the team know of the situation with Smith, they decided to check out the place and see what would happen.

While GoGo didn't think anything was wrong with checking it out right then and there, Baymax insisted on tagging along and advised that they have another plan, reminding them of their _last_ confrontation at the pier when they had gone unprepared. He _suggested_ very stubbornly in his robotic way several times, until they gave in and let Heathcliff be on standby and prepare a 'just-in-case-quick-getaway car', in Fred's words.

"It looks like this is the place," Tadashi murmured over the radio, eyeing the dilapidated warehouse. "Quietly, guys. Let's go."

Fred's enthusiastic voice came over the radio. _"Yeah, stealth mode! Fred's Angels to Smith's rescue!"_

Tadashi sighed. "Fred, this is just to check things out, not a rescue. We don't even know if Smith is in trouble."

 _"And I refuse to be called that name."_ GoGo deadpanned. _"Even the press has a better name for us than Fred."_

 _"I thought Big Hero Six actually sounded pretty good, too."_ Honey admitted shyly.

Fred grumbled a little before relenting. _"Okay, okay. Then... Big Hero Six on a... reconnaissance! It's a recon mission!"_

 _""Fred.""_ Wasabi and GoGo's twin call of disdain was clear in that one word, even with the added static filter. Tadashi rolled his eyes at his friends' antics, knowing that it was hidden behind the helmet.

 _"I wonder why Smith's coworker would build another portal, if there already had been accidents before."_ Honey wondered aloud on the radio, subtly moving the conversation forward as they creeped towards the warehouse.

"Well, Smith said he and his coworker had come up with the tech," answered Tadashi. "And the plans _were_ stolen by Krei. That's at least two people with a potential motive."

Fred gave a dramatic gasp. _"Does this mean... Smith was behind it all? A conspiracy?!"_

Disregarding the deadpan looks the gang was throwing at him, Fred continued, gesturing wildly. _"Come on! It's another classic villain move! An old guy pretending to innocently hand over information —"_

 _"But Smith?"_ Honey refuted. _"Are you saying that nice man opened a portal? What for?"_

GoGo shrugged and the sound of a bubble popping was heard over the radio. _"Maybe revenge again? Krei did steal the tech from them, remember?"_

Fred dramatically gasped and placed two hands over his heart. _"GoGo, I'm so proud — you're learning!"_

GoGo made a fist and shook it in Fred's direction. _"Fred, one more word and this will find your face."_

 _"GoGo!"_ Honey chastised.

Wasabi, who was in the lead, and had still been watching the warehouse, suddenly shushed them. _"Did you hear that?"_

Before they could listen for whatever he heard, they all felt the slight rumbling of the ground and saw the lights on the street beginning to flicker then die out. At the faint hum of machinery from the warehouse they were staking, everyone turned as one towards Tadashi.

Tadashi gave them a quick nod, signaling for action. "Forget stealth. Wasabi, go!"

Quickly, Wasabi cut into the doorway, a lot more at ease with his laser blades than his very first time on Akuma island. The resulting opening was still jagged and not very neat, but the team paid little attention to that as they rushed into the warehouse to investigate the noise.

The hallway was dark, but they could all feel the sweeping wind rushing towards one open doorway that had a familiar blue tint of an open portal. They ran towards the area, making sure to check that no one was sneaking up behind them.

For a moment they stood in the doorway together, situating themselves as they prepared to take the portal down, when Tadashi saw a man standing right in front of the portal and stepping forward —

"Wait!" was out of his mouth before he knew it, and he heard the team flinch at his side as the man stepped forward, not heeding his warning. Before anyone else could say anything more, the man was gone into the portal with a giant sucking sound.

There was only the sound of rushing wind and ominous creaking of metal, fluttering pages of paper flying around everywhere while the team digested what had just happened.

With a gulp of trepidation, Wasabi muttered, _"Was that... was that Smith? Anyone get a good look?"_

No one answered, the team not knowing what to say.

 _"...Let's hope not."_ Honey murmured.

There was another ominous creak of metal, and a desk began to slide towards the tunnel.

"We need to turn this off before it causes havoc," Tadashi said over the radio, glancing at GoGo. "GoGo, help me find the controls and shut it down while everyone else, go look for any information on the portal and gather it together. Baymax, stick with Fred and download everything you see on all the computers, okay? We'll... decide what to do with it later."

Everyone gave a silent nod. A programmer and engineer would know best how to turn it off.

"Be careful guys," Tadashi warned as they separated.

Tadashi and GoGo jogged towards the portal, stopping at a safe distance and looking around. They found the controls behind a viewing glass and came to a stop when they entered the semi-protected area.

Smith was standing handcuffed to the wall, blankly staring at the portal.

Tadashi glanced at the controls and back at GoGo. She gave a silent nod and headed for the controls, speaking into the radio. _"Guys, we found him. We found Smith. Wasabi, I think we'll need your lasers."_

Tadashi slowly approached the man, raising his visor.

"Smith?" Tadashi called out loudly over the buffeting winds.

The man didn't respond, still staring into the portal. He muttered something, but Tadashi couldn't hear anything from the winds and helmet.

Suddenly, the winds and the whirr of machinery stopped, until even the hum of electricity died down. Tadashi glanced at GoGo, who had two hands on her hips, standing triumphantly over the controls.

In the sudden quiet, Tadashi approached Smith, carefully reaching out a hand for his shoulder.

"Smith?" Tadashi spoke again, touching the man cautiously.

Without looking away from the portal, Smith muttered, "He did it."

The older man's eyes flickered over the computer screens and recording devices, not seeing Tadashi or GoGo. "He actually did it..."

"Did what?" Tadashi prodded.

By this time the team began to trickle in, Wasabi coming in first and discreetly cutting off the handcuffs from Smith's hand. Smith didn't notice, still looking dazed. Honey stepped in just as Smith began to speak, and Tadashi could hear Baymax and Fred's distinct steps coming closer.

"Vince... that brilliant boy..." Smith's face began to crumple, as if really realizing what had happened. "He... got through the dimension barrier."

With that said, he staggered backwards, and Tadashi and Wasabi, the closest, quickly grabbed on and sat him on the chair behind him. Smith slumped into the chair, his hands rubbing over his face as he tried to control his shaking. There was a thin glistening trail down his face that was quickly hidden behind his hand.

Tadashi waited a moment for the man to compose himself, moving to take off his own helmet. He silently motioned the others, sans Fred and Baymax, to do so as well. The latter two were busy going through the mess of computers and papers all around the controls, though Fred still paid a cursory attention on what was going on.

When the man looked to be calming down a bit, Tadashi spoke again, feeling like an insensitive jerk. "...Smith, do you remember us?"

Smith looked up dazedly, peering over his hands. When he saw and recognized Tadashi, his eyes widened and he all but jumped out of his chair in agitation.

"You — Tadashi — the kid — Hiro —"

Tadashi and everyone in earshot froze at the name. Smith didn't notice, scrambling to get up from the seat.

"Hiro, the Hamada boy from the fire — Vince did something horrible, he... he..."

Smith tried to push Tadashi aside, moving towards the ruined doors with a very pained look in his eyes. "It's my fault, _my fault_ —"

Honey tried to calm the man down, standing in front of him. "Smith, wait, what are you —"

"I didn't think he would do that, oh god, please let him be okay —"

"Smith," Tadashi grabbed the man, a flare of hope lighting inside. No one had found his — Hiro's — remains... Callaghan's and Hiro's had both been missing, and in the end, if Callaghan survived —

Smith continued, still trying to get out of Tadashi's grip. "I tried to get him out when I realized what Vince had done — I need to — you need to —"

"Smith, are you sure that it was Hiro?" GoGo's cool voice broke through the tumult of Smith's ramblings, stopping him short.

"That— that's what he said his name was..." Smith hesitantly said, suddenly unsure when five sets of eyes turned to him with an intense look. "A-and he looks like —"

"Tadashi," Baymax's calm voice interrupted. "I have found video feeds of Hiro that last dates two days ago."

Tadashi silently mouthed the words 'two days ago', and turned back to Smith, looking heartbroken and disbelieving, yet holding a trace of hope in his eyes. "...You mean... all this time —" His voice cracked.

"All this time, Hiro was _alive_?"

* * *

They first went to the place the video took place and found nothing. Tadashi tried not to look at the walls too hard before he was tempted to break something, but the light scratches on the wall counting the days sent pangs of guilt and anger.

 _Why didn't I search for him? Why did I believe Hiro was_ dead _if Callaghan was alive?_

They separated to search everywhere else, and Wasabi found him first in the room further down the hallway, strapped into a hospital bed, pale and gaunt, cold to the touch.

" _Dios mio_ ," Honey whispered. "Is he...?"

"He's still breathing." Wasabi replied tersely, taking his pulse.

Fred skidded into the room and stopped short. "It's really him," he muttered. "Holy Mother of Megatron."

Not listening any further to the radio commentary, Tadashi shoved Fred aside from the doorway with Baymax and Smith right behind him.

He stopped next to the bed, hands shaking as he touched the unconscious body of his brother.

His _alive_ brother.

" _Hiro_." he breathed, the sight of his brother affecting him in ways he didn't know how to describe.

Tadashi clutched Hiro's face and winced at how bony it felt. "Hiro, you knucklehead, _wake up_."

There was no response from the teen, and Tadashi blinked away the blur of tears, holding tightly onto Hiro's hand, trying to accept that his brother that he had lost and mourned for — his brother was alive and breathing.

"Scanning for injuries," Baymax quietly intoned behind Tadashi. "...Scan complete."

Everyone turned to Baymax.

"There is an overbalance of chemicals: dangerously high levels of phenobarbitol and trace amounts of zaleplonix and dimenhydrinate observed. Diagnosis: intoxication from several sedative drugs."

Tadashi tightened his grip on Hiro's lifeless hand. "Zaleplonix..."

"Suggested course of action: immediate transport to the nearest hospital for treatment."

"...What are those chemicals?" Fred asked hesitantly.

Baymax answered solemnly. "All three chemicals are known for quick sedation and induced coma, but has been taken out of commercial hospital use. Heavy usage and improper dosage of any three chemicals may lead to hallucination and unstable mental conditions, or, in some cases, death."

GoGo cursed colorfully, but Honey did nothing to stop her, as she was muttering things herself, albeit in Spanish.

Tadashi quickly took out the needle that was in Hiro's arm, briskly undoing all the velcro straps tying him down. "We need to get him to the closest hospital right now. Baymax, search for —"

"Tadashi, wait." GoGo interrupted.

"What?" Tadashi curtly asked.

"We need someone to handle the police and gather up the data before they come here investigating that electricity surge. All the information here is vulnerable right now, and anyone can poke around and take it. We need to rid the place of its data."

"She is right." Smith said heavily, breaking his silence. "This project should have been put in storage the moment we found that there was danger, but... Vince, then Krei..."

The team paused, mentally adding Callaghan to the list.

"Tadashi, GoGo has a point. We need to collect all the scattered data away from here, and you're the only one who knows how to do anything useful with software." Fred said with uncharacteristic seriousness. "And as a recently established vigilante group, the police doesn't trust us yet to stay on a potential crime scene."

"But..."

GoGo spoke up again. "I'll take him. Baymax, you're coming too. You don't need Baymax or me to destroy machinery." When Tadashi still tried to argue, she stopped him. "Don't argue Tadashi. I'm the fastest of all of you, skates _and_ car. You're needed here."

Tadashi closed his mouth, reluctantly nodding in agreement.

"Get Heathcliff to take you to..." GoGo glanced at Baymax as he carefully picked Hiro up. "Baymax, where's the closest hospital?"

"The nearest hospital is a ten minute drive, San Fransokyo General Hospital, located to the Northeast."

"Great. Make that a seven minute drive; Wasabi, keys." Without a word, Wasabi handed her the keys to his new minivan. "Come find us when you're all done. Let's go."

For a moment the team and Smith all stood watching GoGo and Baymax leave through the door. When they were out of sight, Fred broke the silence with a sigh. "Well, we better get to it, before the police find us and misunderstand."

Suddenly, he shifted to a more mischievous tone, slinging an arm over Wasabi's shoulders. "'Cause you know, in issue 42 of —"

Wasabi hurriedly interrupted Fred before he got too far in his comic book references, not saying anything about the worry-wrinkles that creased between his brows. "Yeah, let's do that," he said, running a hand over his face. He complained without any heat. "And can you ever stop it with the comic references?"

Honey prodded the elder scientist. "Smith, could you please show us where?"

"Right... this way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So close to the end! Will finish soon! (btw, I made a tumblr at newandold/newandoldskies)


	11. The Rising Tide of Hope

**[Day ?]**

Hiro became aware of an annoying beeping sound. It sounded just like the alarm of a cheap clock, only with longer intervals in between.

And similar to how the cheap alarm clock worked, the sound faded in, becoming louder and more obnoxious as time passed. The intervals didn't change much, and the beeps didn't become more urgent and more in number, but the steady beeps grew louder and louder.

Actually, when he contemplated the sound a little more, it sounded more like a heart monitor than the hypothetical alarm clock.

Hiro frowned, wondering why he would be near to hear a heart monitor.

Hiro opened an eye, only to flinch them closed at the bright light. When the pain from the sudden brightness became a little easier to bear, he peeked under his lashes to blurrily see a white and clean room.

Opening his eyes slightly wider still, squinting until his eyes got accustomed to the light, Hiro found himself in a hospital room, propped up slightly at an angle. The brown door straight ahead of the crinkly and scratchy hospital bed was slightly open with a gap that peeked into a quiet hallway outside.

Hiro slowly blinked to clear his eyes once more. _This was still a dream, right?_

Since that fire, so many days ago, everything was a waking nightmare. Anything good turned out to be a dream, and the past few times he 'woke' on a hospital bed, things had been so scattered that he didn't know if what happened was a dream or not. Though, it was nice to wake in a bright room this time, unlike the usual darkness and gray tones he found himself in.

Honestly, his head must really be messed up to continue to come up with these elaborate dreams, when it did nothing but hurt him more.

The last moment that he had been certain of his awake-ness had been when he had been about to escape. The man who came to take him back, Smith — he looked trustworthy and really upset at his situation, even giving some information about his kidnapper, a Vincent Kruger, if he remembered right.

With a sigh, Hiro closed his eyes and made no effort to move his head. Soon he would wake to reality, which would be another monochrome room (probably gray) where he would stay staring at equations all day, or saw imaginary figments of the people he wanted to see. This place had the monochrome part down, so it was most likely a dream where his imagination went rampant. Another soft sigh escaped his lips, and Hiro briefly opened his eyes, checking if he had woken yet, but found his hospital room unchanged.

Closing his eyes again, Hiro wished and wished ( _futilely_ , he privately thought), though he was resigned that everything he wished for wouldn't come true. But he couldn't help himself.

_I want to wake up now, before I see something I really want to be true..._

He opened his eyes to find the scene in front of him still unchanged; without meaning to, his half-open eyes reluctantly began roaming around the room to take in details.

There was a window to the right with blinds, a table with a vase with a sunflower placed right in front.

His eyes flickered next to the heart monitor by the table, watching the consecutive waves of the red and green line. He followed the waves with his own heart beat a while, not really able to understand much except that his heart rate was steady. He next took note of the half-full IV bag of yellow liquid that was next to the heart monitor machine, eyes flickering down the IV tube to see it taped into his arm.

He saw another, thicker tube that went across his arm and over the IV tube, coming from somewhere out of his field of sight. His eyes followed the transparent material until he saw that it led up to his face — and he registered the feel of a mask over his mouth and nose, and concluded that he had some sort of oxygen mask.

He closed his eyes for a while, just breathing in the air tinged with the smell of plastic and disinfectant. His thoughts wandered as he waited for the dream to end, but the persistent beeping of the heart monitor continued steadily. Blinking open his eyes again, Hiro's gaze returned to its wandering.

Hiro's attention wandered back down to the IV needle in his arm again, going further down towards his hand resting on top of the white hospital sheets; he saw the small scratches on his palms and fingers that he had gotten trying to escape, and noted the wired clip on the middle finger.

He twitched his hand and distractedly noticed the crinkly-soft-warm material of the hospital blanket shift slightly as it twitched as commanded.

Hiro spent a few more moments just staring at the hand, thoughts slow as a crawling turtle; as more of his senses began to filter back, he realized that the other hand felt warmer, and pushed some effort into lolling his head to the other side.

He blinked when he found three hands, instead of one, his own trapped between two larger ones. Trying to process what he was seeing, Hiro's eyes slowly roamed down the two larger ones and found a mop of messy, dark hair.

Half-guessing and half-knowing who it was that his mind decided to conjure, his eyes drank in the sight of the light green cardigan and San Fransokyo cap.

Hiro felt his stomach drop, knowing that it was something — someone — that he desperately desired and did not desire just as much because —

Because this was all a dream, and he didn't want to see him turn away again.

Hiro stared at the mop of hair for the longest of moments. Tadashi's face was turned away from him, pillowed by his arms, and he saw his soft breathing from the rise and fall of his back. Hiro's conflicted thoughts began to calm when nothing happened, and he didn't notice that the heart monitor noting the slight increase in heartbeat during his moment of trepidation.

As much as Hiro hoped and wished it was real, the cynical part of his mind insisted that this was all a dream.

Tadashi and Aunt Cass and everyone else — they probably didn't even know to look for him, thinking he was dead; Tadashi would never appear in front of him unless it was a dream, because his older brother would already have found him if he thought Hiro was.

The older Hamada was not a genius, but he was smart in his own way — no, Hiro was certain that Tadashi thought him dead.

To make up for the lack of close family members, his subconscious was probably working overtime, giving him dreams where he could interact with them. ( _But it made waking up even more painful, didn't his subconscious know that?_ )

However, no matter how snidely his cynical thoughts sniped about the current dream, it couldn't entirely kill off the small hopeful voice near the back of his mind.

_If Tadashi was really and truly here... that means I'm out of that horrible place... right?_

Hiro continued gazing at the back of his older brother's head, waiting for something to happen. Tadas— dream-Tadashi didn't do anything, still lost in sleep.

_To peel the band-aid quickly or slowly, that is the dilemma,_ Hiro thought.

Hiro experimentally twitched his fingers, unsure if it would wake him from the dream or if the dream-Tadashi would wake up.

As the teen waited with bated breath, dream-Tadashi shifted, hands tightening around his entrapped hand. The dream-figment murmured, turning his face towards Hiro's hand, dragging it closer. Hiro stopped breathing for a moment, taking in the familiar face; Tadashi had tired eye-bags like that one time he had stayed up working on his final project, and his brows were fused together in a frown. Tadashi muttered something indistinguishable, his mouth tilted down.

Hesitantly, Hiro quietly whispered to the figment of imagination shaped as his brother, the name slurring together into a nickname he used when he had been a small child. "'Dashi...?"

Dream-Tadashi didn't wake.

Hiro wondered what would cause the warmth he felt on his hand. Perhaps it was just his blankets again, just like the other time when he distinctly remembered cuddling with Aunt Cass on the couch, only to wake to find himself tangled in blankets.

The cynical voice of _this is a dream_ warred with the hopeful voice of _this is real, there are too many details._

A half-relieved, half-frustrated sigh escaped him when Tadashi went back to breathing regularly. Of all the dreams he could have had of his older brother, he had to have one where Tadashi was asleep... which was both a good and bad thing, now that he thought about it.

Good, because he did get to see Tadashi and not have any kind of interactions with him, meaning a less painful wakeup in the morning. Bad, because Tadashi was asleep, and they weren't going to be any interactions between himself and the imagination-figment.

For a long moment, Hiro simply drank in his brother's face.

A tentative thought raised its head. _Maybe I could wake Tadashi up, and I would wake from the dream?_

It took a while to act on that thought. Hiro was afraid to lose the small comfort of being next to someone, to wake and find himself alone again. But the braver, more reckless side of him insisted on interacting with the imagination-figment in the hope to get something more substantial than just a close-up of fake-Tadashi's face.

After a long moment of indecision, Hiro finally twitched his fingers in fake-Tadashi's hand, hoping that it was enough to wake him, but not enough to rid the apparition.

Dream-Tadashi frowned more deeply and did nothing further; Hiro reluctantly came to a decision of saving himself the pain and began to forcefully pull his hand out of the warm grip. Honestly, he wanted to stay in the dream a little longer, but when he woke, it would be that much more depressing and painful — it was better to stop the dream now before it changed and did something that would be too much to take —

Dream-Tadashi frowned deeper and held more tightly to Hiro's slipping hand, pulling it up against his face. He muttered a garbled 'won't let you', when the hand was half-way out of his hands, which made the teen pause.

The small hopeful voice was growing louder and confident, reminding Hiro of the clarity he felt, the amount of detail.

_Maybe it wasn't a dream_ —

But Hiro squashed the thought and the hope that had sprouted, reminding himself that _everyone thought him dead_ and _no one was looking for him_.

Trying to ignore the heart ache those thoughts caused, he pulled harder to get his hand away from Tada — the _imagination-figment_ 's grip. The faster he woke from this dream, the faster he would be able to escape or send some kind of message through Smith. Then hopefully, they'll realize he was alive and look for him.

When he was nearly finished pulling the tips of his fingers out of Tada — _imagination-figment_ 's hold, to his surprise, Tada — _the dream figment_ — snapped up, grasped his slipping fingers into a secure hold again with a loud, "Hiro, _no_!"

Hiro froze in place, watching the fake-Tadashi — _it's a fake, a dream, a figment of my imagination_ — warily. He should be waking up right about here... so _why wasn't he waking up?_

Tadashi did not notice Hiro watching him with fearful, wide-open eyes, looking around blearily for whatever woke him up.

With turbulent thoughts wondering which direction the dream would head this time, Hiro hesitantly called out to his brother again.

"Ta- Tadashi...?"

His older brother jumped in surprise and whipped his head and met Hiro's eyes. Time slowed, and the two brothers stared at each other; Hiro's gaze roamed Tadashi's face again, taking in the more pronounced eye shadows and the 5 o'clock shadow he hadn't seen before. Tadashi's face was crumpling into something like the grieving face again, and Hiro sighed tiredly, resignation coloring his eyes as he waited for the dream to fade, starting with Tadashi rejecting he was alive —

With no warning, Tadashi lunged at him, grabbing him by the shoulders and holding him tight. "Hiro, you _stupid idiot_."

Hiro's eyes widened in surprise. He hadn't expected that, and the familiar voice of his older brother scolding him for doing something foolish was as legit as could be — for a dream.

He stayed as limp as possible, trying to harden his heart from feeling anything at all — but at the repeated murmurs of 'oh my god' right next to his ears, there was a burning in the back of his eyes, and he couldn't stop the tears that were welling up.

If this was a dream, he wished it would never end. The hug with Tadashi's strong arms — _not fake? ...real?_ — all around him felt protective, warm, and as comforting as a hot bath after being stuck in a cold rain storm.

Hiro unwillingly let the tears pour, his heart crying out at seeing his older brother who always took care of him, no matter what —

_Just like the other dream_.

Hiro stiffened at the reminder. Slowly, he began to push away from the hug; that time, the dream-Tadashi had comforted him as well until he realized that 'Hiro was dead' — then the dream became a mess of isolation and suffocating smoke.

A hand running through his hair interrupted his thoughts, and Hiro tuned back into his surroundings to hear Tadashi start scolding him angrily.

"You _stupid, idiotic, boneheaded_ , reckless _knucklehead_!" Unlike the harsh words he was sprouting, Tadashi's voice sounded suspiciously shaky, and Hiro felt a wetness on his shoulders where his older brother's head was.

If this was a dream, it was so realistic that it hurt even that much more.

Soon, dream-Tadashi would 'realize' that he was dead. And then dream-Tadashi would tell him to 'go back to the dead'. Again.

He should do everything he could to wake up before he faced the crushing disappointment. Again.

But...

Hiro's arms weakly went around the older, stronger man in front of him, clinging as tightly as his noodle-like arms allowed.

Without further prompting, a soft sob broke from his lips, and words began to pour out, only half-making sense.

"Y'promised... y'promised, but y'weren't there..."

Hiro cried, cried as he had never before, for Tadashi's broken promise and the _kidnapping_ and being _left alone_ —

As if understanding his younger brother's blubbers and his need to be as close as possible, Tadashi — _not a dream?_ — clung to him as well, nearly pulling him off the bed. He muttered, "I'm so, _so_ sorry. I thought... I thought..." _You died_ , went unsaid in the silence filled with Hiro's sobbing.

This was a dream, but Hiro couldn't help feel that is wasn't. The relief of finding his brother next to him, the faint smell of the shampoo Tadashi used, the familiar hug that he remembered from stormy nights —

After a long silence full of wordless murmurs of comfort and heart-wrenching cries of distress, Hiro began mumbling through his sobs, explaining everything that he'd gone through. Even if he was pouring his heart out to a figment of imagination, it was cathartic.

"...I was s'scared... I tried _everything_ to get out... and I tried to wait... but _no one_ came... Stupid guy was makin' me solve all those stupid theor'ms of dime'sion travelin'... and it was givin' me a he'dache..."

Dream-Tadashi held him tight and soothed it all away, crooning comforts and rubbing his hands in circles behind his back, chasing away the shadows of fear with his big presence. "I'm here, Hiro. Right here. You're not there anymore. You're at the hospital. You know the one we always went to after we made those crazy inventions? You're safe, you hear me? _Safe_."

As time passed, Hiro's tears slowly came to a stop, his ragged breathing fogging up the oxygen mask. When dream-Tadashi shifted, Hiro clutched desperately onto him, wondering if it was the end of the dream —

As if knowing exactly what he was thinking, dream-Tadashi stopped moving and began stroking the bed-mussed hair back as the younger Hamada calmed down, muttering reassurances that _it was okay_. When Hiro's grip relaxed a tiny bit, he heard Tadashi's soft and relieved whisper in his ear. " _I'm so glad you woke up._ "

At that point, Hiro's arms had slowly lost strength and began loosening from its death grip, the atrophied muscles tired from the sudden movement. The teen began dreading the moment he would find himself alone again in the gray room, but the dream did not end — yet. Dream-Tadashi was still holding onto him, slowly moving both of them into a more comfortable hug where Hiro could loop his arms around his neck. It felt wonderful.

_And I'm still not waking up from the dream_ , Hiro thought. The small hopeful voice was even louder than before.

_Was it really a_ dream _?_

The teen could feel Tadashi — not a dream? — slowly shift his hold into a more relaxed hug.

He could feel the tingle of the blood flowing back as the circulation came back —

The IV needle was pulling at his arm rather uncomfortably —

His eyes were also uncomfortable, wet and feeling gross —

The oxygen mask was pushing into his face, crushed between his face and Tadashi's shoulder —

Suddenly, the realization struck him like an electric jolt.

_Dreams don't have... T_ _hey don't have pain._

_They_ don't have _pain._

A shiver ran up his back. This was actually Tadashi? It was the real thing?

Hiro blinked around the room again and recognized the quiet hallway through the gap of the wooden door as the same one from the hospital that he and Tadashi had frequently visited in their childhood. The vase was holding a sunflower, a flower Aunt Cass always brought over whenever they had to stay overnight at the hospital. ( _"It's to remind you that you'll come home soon,_ _" Aunt Cass says to him, pinching his cheek_ )

Hiro blinked again. _This... this was real?_

Another sharp and slightly painful tug from the tangled IV line confirmed it.

Hiro felt his slowly drying eyes start to fill again with hot tears of relief. Soon tears were running down his cheeks when he blinked to clear his eyes to check that he _was_ awake.

He was safe, he was _seeing and feeling this_ , and this _wasn't_ _a dream_.

Hiro pulled slightly away to look up at his brother — Tadashi, Tadashi was _here_ — and stared at him with a mixed expression of hope and doubt before cautiously asking, "...Tadashi? You're... you're really here...?"

A shadow passed over Tadashi's face, but it went by too quick to see exactly what kind of expression it was. But Hiro forgot about the shadow when Tadashi's face morphed into a familiar — it _was_ his older brother, it was Tadashi, _it was Tadashi_ — gentle, soft smile. His face came closer as he pulled him into a loose hug again — he was here, _Tadashi was here_ —

"Yes, you bonehead. I'm right here, and you are _not_ getting away from me again. _Never_ , you hear me?"

At those words, Hiro felt an inexplicable warmth flow through his body. What tension that had existed before ebbed out, and a relieved sigh came unbidden from his lips.

Hiro's gaze unfocused, the relief he felt loosening up his body and slurring the words from his mouth. "...y're really no' gonna go 'nywhere?"

Tadashi's grip tightened infinitesimally around him. "Of course not." Hiro felt another ruffle on his head, the ones Tadashi gave him when teasing. "Oh-ho, just you wait knucklehead, I'm not going to let you go _anywhere_ without me. You're going to have to deal with me in the same _bathroom_ for a while."

Hiro didn't really hear the last part, as his brain was only focusing on the 'Of course not' and 'not going to let you go anywhere'.

"'Kay... Tha's good... I was lon'ly..." Hiro began to relax further into Tadashi's strong chest, surrendering to the fatigue from his sudden movements and swing of emotions. "...Y're g'nna st'y... righ' h're?"

Tadashi rubbed his back reassuringly. "Yes, Hiro, I'll be right here. I _promise_."

"Pinky... pr'mise?"

Tadashi huffed in amusement. " _Hell yes_ , pinky promise."

"'Kay... an' we alw'ys kee' pinky pr'mises... R'le numb'r one..." Hiro trailed off, slowly losing his grip with reality again. He faintly heard Tadashi reply cutting off.

"Yes, rule number one, pinky promises are forev — Hiro? _Hiro!_ Hiro —"

Hiro lost consciousness again to his older brother's cries, but he only felt relief that everything was over and done with. He had nothing to worry about, because Tadashi was here. He was _here_ , and he would take care of everything.

Tadashi probably kicked the bad guy's butt for him already.

* * *

_One year later_

"Hiro, come on! You'll be late for your morning class!" Tadashi called as he pulled the scooter out of the garage.

Hiro quickly ate the last piece of buttered toast and gulped down the rest of his milk. "I'm coming!"

He picked up his bag and rushed out of the café, yelling a goodbye back at Aunt Cass. "I'll see you later Aunt Cass!"

"Have a good day boys!"

Hiro hopped on the back of Tadashi's scooter, grabbing the helmet held out from Tadashi's hands.

Tadashi chuckled as he rapped on the helmet to make sure it was secure, then turned and started the scooter.

It was another normal day, that is, as normal as a life as a college student-superhero-vigilante could get.

To the general public, Big Hero 6 remained that, 'Big Hero 6', with rumors of a seventh hidden member directing from the shadows. With the emergence of superheroes all around the country, it wasn't that difficult for the people of San Fransokyo to accept them, though they had a tough start.

The vigilantes' tendency of wearing muted colors had led to several misunderstandings with the police; they had thought it was a new gang of some sort, and several officers had even been disgruntled that they did not leave things to the police. It had taken a costume change to a more bright color scheme, a nonviolent end to a police shootout and a runaway tram before the police and the public gave the San Fransokyo heroes their full support.

After that the team had to work harder to keep their secret identities intact, Hiro working on new inventions during his medical downtime to help out. Clothes that changed color on command, allowing the team to slip in and out of the public eye without much trouble; extra-tinted glass on the helmet visors with another layer that screened useful information on the sides, and many other small little inventions that made it easier on the team's double-life. With Hiro's ingenuity and teamwork, they were also able to change their inventions to an unrecognizable degree, allowing everyone on the team to hand in their original senior projects with no problem.

Things were great. There was the occasional villain that came through San Fransokyo, but Big Hero 6 only really had to deal with the Fujitas and Banzai Bombers regularly, but that was no biggie for the team.

Actually, tonight was Hiro's first planned patrol; today was the day when Big Hero 6 would change to Big Hero 7.

He couldn't wait until the bad guys came up against his new and upgraded microbot technology! They'd never see it coming.

Hiro sighed contentedly as he held tighter to Tadashi's waist, watching the sakura rain down on the world around them.

All was well with the world.


	12. Epilogue - Wandering the City of Beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make sure to read Chapter 11: The Rising Tide of Hope. It's a double update.

At first, Vince is crushed, because the world outside the portal is still San Fransokyo, still the same skyline and blimps he's seen for years —

— but then he notices the children-teenagers-young adults watching the pod with sharp and wary eyes (for some reason, their eyes passes over him, and they do not see him), covered in the dust of the destroyed portal, dressed in a virtual rainbow of colors, and he realizes that _yes_ , he has made it to a different dimension —

— because the smallest one in purple is someone he recognizes; he's the same child he left locked up and unconscious, and _dammit_ , Monique would have his _head_ if she ever found out and does that mean that Tadashi Hamada is the one who sent Callaghan to jail?

He watches them cry over the medical robot (who sacrificed himself to save the Abigail Callaghan, who was reported as a experimental casualty in his world), inferring from conversation that Tadashi Hamada has _died_ — that this time, it is the younger brother who faces the world with trembling lips and too-skinny shoulders, trying to hold up the impossible weight of the universe in the face of loss —

— and he finally understand the games Fate plays. She will either take the boy or his brother, or both; his dimension, where he existed in the universe to kidnap the boy, was an exception, one in the midst of millions.

Because in the end, someone always grieves; in his dimension, it is himself, Smith and Callaghan. Here, it is the boy who lost his brother because he did not exist make the sacrifice; Tadashi had been killed by the machinations of a desperate professor trying to get his daughter back.

But that is not that important now — he is here to look for the woman who went through before him, the _meaning_ of his life who went through because of a silly mistake —

He turns back to the portal, as something tells him that he's not there — not yet —

— so he steps-floats-flies through, gazing into nothing as the multiple folds, thinly curtained veils and cracks of the universe come crashing into him once more.

(000)

Has it been a minute? days? years?

Another step from nothingness into the world of tangibility, followed by another — then another —

He is at an empty shoreline, and he sees numerous portals around him. He instinctively knows that this is San Fransokyo, and that no one can see the portals nor come into contact with them. He chooses the next portal to walk into and walks toward it, but something causes him to slow down to a stop in front of another portal in particular.

As he watches, a woman appears out the portal. Her step is full of determination, though her body slumps slightly, as if tired.

 _Monique,_ is the one word that he thinks; his eyes roams up the long brunette hair to the face — and he finds disappointment.

But she looks straight at him, and he at her — this is the first person in all the worlds to actually meet his eyes.

She looks... surprised, then... understanding. Followed by easy acceptance.

He opens his mouth then closes it, because the answer is already there. She has also been traveling through the portals, looking for something.

He fidgets, not knowing what to say. She patiently waits for him to speak first, but when he remains silent, she speaks up with a small hesitant smile.

"...Are you Lost too?"

He hears the emphasis on the word, and immediately understands.

 _Lost,_ he muses. It's like a code, an inside joke — one that only the two of them has the key to and understands. It's a language with new and different meanings behind the same old words.

Because Lost is exactly what the feeling is; the sense of loneliness, of feeling out of sync with the world, of rejection from the very air that catches in his lungs with every breath. He does not _belong_ here.

He is Lost — he should know, as he felt the echoes of what he is feeling now often enough in the past, before he met Smith and Monique.

And he recognizes a kindred traveler, a Lost traveler — the woman standing in front of him.

He sees the woman waiting, and realises he hasn't answered her yet.

"Lost," he muses again at the word, at how it fits so well. "...I suppose so."

"As you've probably guessed, me too," she says with a sad sigh. "We're a long ways from home." She looks back at the portal she came through wistfully.

He follows her gaze to the portal then back at her again. He finally notes the skin-tight suit with a Krei company logo.

She glances at him and sees him observing the logo; she fiddles with her pocket as she answers the silent question. "I was in an experiment sponsored by Krei when the portal..." she runs a hand through her hair. "It was theoretically sound and already had some experimental success before I went in, but there was some sort of malfunction that broke the connection my pod had with the portal."

She sighs again and looks up into the sky. "The only way was forward."

"Ah." he says in understanding. And he does understand. He has spent the past few months to find a way to _pass_ those 'malfunctions' to get to the other side — where Monique was.

"...You too?" she asks, curiosity clear in her eyes.

He shakes his head. "I am looking for someone." he says simply. In those words the whole story is told: someone he loved went through, and he is here to get her back.

Vince looks out at the ocean and looks unseeing at the San Fransokyo bridge, losing himself a little to memories of Monique. The bridge looks different; instead of the Asian-styled gates, he sees purely geometric squares that make up the bridge. Monique would have begun to rant about the 'historical influences on art', 'different color scheme', and 'stylistic backgrounds' that was probably the cause of the differences.

Vincent shakes himself when he finds himself analyzing why the bridge might be different in Monique's point of view and glances back at the woman. She also has a far-off look in her eyes as she gazes at the sky. It is a cloudless blue that is slowly turning red-orange-pink as the evening comes — time passes around them, but it doesn't hold as much meaning as it had before — he looks back at the bridge, and the lights on the are shining more and more clearly as the sky darkens.

With thoughts still on Monique, he turns to the woman next to him. "Have you seen...?" Vincent trails off, unsure how to start describing the person that is Monique: energetic, optimistic, self-conscious in one situation then confident in another, strong yet... so, so frail inside.

The woman shakes her head ruefully. "I haven't seen anyone yet. You're the first who's seen and heard me."

He can't help but sigh at the bitter sting of disappointment yet again.

There is a soft pat on his shoulder. "So you're looking for someone who went through before you," she says sympathetically. "I partially understand what you're going through. I left behind a father."

She hesitates, appearing to wish to say something. Vincent notes all this from his periphery, thinking to himself that it's so very easy to read the woman. But he does and says nothing, looking off into the distant horizon of the not-their San Fransokyo city line.

She begins, uncertainty clear in her voice.

"I've walked through these dimensions while trying to fumble my way back, and..." she hesitates again before continuing. "In most worlds, if the other-me chose to go into the portal, I — the other-me always made it back alive somehow."

She looks at him and sees him watch her. Their eyes tangle, as she speaks again.

"Has... that been the same for you? One detail that remains unchanged in all the dimensions?"

He thinks back to all the worlds he has been in. Two pairs of siblings, a loss of one sibling in one pair or the other.

"...Perhaps," he answers, not really sure but vaguely understanding where the woman is going with this. If they are traveling in one direction and there is one detail that is the same, assuming that the dimensions are organized in some fashion, it would make sense to go in the one direction where the detail is the same as found in his own world.

"Could there be a chance that our worlds — " The woman begins, and Vince finishes the sentence.

"— that our worlds are related? I would put it as a 70% chance of them being related. Even if they are not, I suspect our worlds are still closer to each than most."

The woman lights up. "Oh, then would you travel back with — " she begins excitedly, only to be brusquely cut off.

"I have to find someone."

Vince tries not to show his discomfort at the sorely disappointed look on her face.

"Is it Monique?" she asks. At his look of surprise, she explains simply. "It was the first thing you said when you saw me."

"Ah." he says.

And what else is there to say?

Awkward silence hangs between the two until the woman sighs, then meets his eyes again. "Well. I'm off. Hopefully we'll meet again — "

Something tells Vincent that he shouldn't be letting her go. It's the same feeling he has felt about Monique's survival — it makes no sense but there is not even a smidgen of doubt that he should stick with her for the rest of his journey; she is somehow very, very important to him. So he is not so surprised when he finds his body moving before his mind, catching the woman's wrist to stop her before he could come up with the words of a suitable excuse.

When she looks up questioningly, he clears his throat, letting her go.

He tries to word what he wants to say several times, but it all ends in a cough. She looks more and more concerned as he continues to cough.

He finally clears his throat again and gives her a suggestion; he doesn't do very well asking for help (or asking for anything, for that matter), and he hopes that she understands what he tries to say with so many words.

"...I believe my sister is quite close. If you do not mind the... detour, I would not particularly... mind your presence."

The woman's concerned and worried expression morphs into puzzlement, surprise, then joy. She smiles brightly back at him with a knowing look in her eyes.

He can't help smiling back in relief. She has understood. Right then, he can't help but compare her to Monique; she is very much like her, showing her emotions so openly and yet effortlessly understanding his lack of ability to express himself the same way.

They spend a few more moments smiling softly at each other, both relieved in their own way that they no longer need to be alone. The sky has darkened to a rich pink-yellow-purple, and a twinkle low in the sky proclaims the arrival of the evening star.

He clears his throat once again and stretches out a hand toward the woman in formal invitation. "As Smith, my — my father," he pauses, feeling a shiver of delight at the word. He uncharacteristically ignores the negative thought of whether he _deserves_ Smith as a father and continues. "As my father often reminds me to do, let me introduce myself. My name is Vincent. Vincent Kruger."

There is a slight look of surprise when she hears his last name, but it passes quickly. She takes his hand and shakes it, a genuine smile lighting up her face.

"Nice to meet you, fellow traveler. My name is Abigail. Abigail Callaghan."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there.
> 
> You peeps, it's the end. We're finally here. Cosmic Intervention is complete.
> 
> Ha, the funny thing is, I actually finished writing chapter 11: The Rising Tide of Hope (Hiro waking up in hospital) way back when Vincent first showed up in chapter 5. (Many things have happened between then and now, and I am kind of glad I already wrote the ending, cuz I would read it when I was discouraged and get my Hamada feels back)
> 
> The Epilogue, on the other hand, is pretty open-ended. I have some vague ideas of what might happen to Vincent and Abigail, but I am not going to write about them. Maybe if my muse drags me back to them one rainy day.
> 
> Also, I don't think I mentioned it enough: Reviewers, you were the saviors of this story.
> 
> Without you peeps, I would have given up at chapter 6, when I had to come up with a dialogue between two OCs. (I had planned for Smith and Vincent, but they were supposed to be plot points, not important at all; then Smith and Vincent crept up on me with their family feels :S) Every time when I was about to abandon the story, someone would pop in and leave a little review, with either a 'plz update soon' or 'this story is great'.
> 
> Though some say that is annoying, I was encouraged. A lot. Thanks so much.
> 
> And look where I am now! I can now officially say that I have completed a story!
> 
> Again and again, thanks for reading this fic. I don't know what story will sweep me up next time, but this has been a fun ride. Thanks for riding it with me.
> 
> Cyber-love and cyber-hugs to everyone,
> 
> New and Old


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